Bereskarn Skein
by Nagia
Summary: Zevran was pretty sure he saw where this headlong rush to end the Blight was going: very far downhill, very quickly. And that was before the Grey Warden who spared his life turned into a bear. Now the only thing he's sure of is that it's not going to end like all the other fairy stories.
1. ma emma lin, ma emma abelas

The Redcliffe dungeon doesn't impress him. Connected to a secret passage locked by a signet ring? Zevran feels like he's stepped into a piss-poor imitation of a fairy tale. It's worse than Sens's eerie powers of persuasion, worse than the fact that the two remaining Grey Wardens are an ex-templar and a mage, and it even manages to be worse than the fact that Alistair is a secret heir to the throne.

And every time he starts thinking about how like a fairy tale his life has been recently, he starts thinking about the way all the fairy stories end. Or, more specifically, he starts thinking about the way fairy stories end and why those endings aren't going to happen for them.

They've only taken a step into the dungeon proper when a man's shrieks echo off the stone. The voice booms and bounces around them, failing entirely to mask the hisses and gasps of angry undead.

Sens and Alistair share a look. Within instants, Alistair has sword and shield out and Sens has slung her staff across her back. He steps forward, dropping all his weight into a warding stance, while Sens falls back into his shadow.

The tableau lasts barely a minute. When Alistair charges forward, he does so at the side of an angry-looking brown bear.

Zevran follows. He doesn't bother trying to duck between them; when the Wardens fight together, they move as one. It's uncanny, really, how a tiny elf mage and a six foot ex-templar can complement each other so perfectly, even when one is a bear.

Instead, he slips around Sens. It's easier to move around the wider frame, especially since the wider frame isn't the one striking out in every direction with a sword and shield. And after that, he dodges claws and paws and bones and blades to flank the undead.

Amusingly enough, dead people like being backstabbed even less than living people. Less amusingly, Alistair and Sens handle the other corpses before he can get in a good old-fashioned hamgstringing or kidney strike. Although maybe a kidney strike to a corpse isn't such a good idea; cutting into the bowels is rank enough, but cutting into _rotting_ bowels?

It's not until after Alistair has sheathed his sword and slung his shield back over it that the man from before speaks again.

"H-hello? Is there anyone alive out there?"

The Grey Wardens turn in unison. The sight of such different creatures moving to the exact same rhythm unsettles Zevran even more than the walking dead.

He edges closer to get a better look at the prisoner. What he sees impresses him almost as much as the rest of this damnable dungeon: a resigned-looking mage, pale and weary, in bloodied robes. From what he can see, he assumes the mage fled the reach of the walking corpses by retreating to the furthest corner of the cell. The sight of them draws him closer, though reluctantly. He trudges away from the far wall and toward the cell door. Every couple of steps, he winces.

Alistair takes a step toward Sens, half-shielding her from the mage's sight, as she resumes her true form.

The mage is a scant pace from the door when he catches sight of them and stops. Zevran has no idea why – perhaps his stay in the dungeon has given him a fear of heavily armed people, perhaps he's unnerved by women who turn into bears and back again – but finds mild amusement in the way his momentum carries the hem of his robes forward.

That amusement sours into irritation at the sudden change in the man's expression. He's seen enough of hate to recognize it, and the pain underneath it, and – something else. Guilt, perhaps? Resignation?

Sens stiffens. Zevran watches her closely, tries to read the way her muscles tense, as if she's preparing for a fight. But body language is only enough of the puzzle to see that one's there: it answers none of the questions that arise.

"You!" The prisoner's voice is ragged, more ragged than it was when he was shouting.

"Me," Sens says. Zevran has heard her speak softly, has heard sadness and loss in her voice, but this tone – this tone is new.

The mage's jaw tightens. He's tense and silent for a long while, but then he swallows, closes his eyes. "Before anything else... what happened to Lily?"

"They took her, Jowan. I don't know where."

The imprisoned mage – Jowan – hangs his head. Zevran sees genuine grief in the man's bearing, perhaps even contrition, but his gaze shifts to focus on the Wardens.

"So she pays for my crime. She shouldn't. She shouldn't have to."

Alistair's posture is perfect. Whatever his youth, it hasn't cowed him into a slouch, and not even his splintmail seems to weigh him down. But the shield slung over his back hangs awkwardly; the line of his shoulder even _looks_ taut. Despite his open stance, he's coiled tight and ready to spring.

Sens, too, bears herself tall and proud, one hand on her hip to give the impression of _strong, but not openly hostile. Yet._ But she's stepped back, away from the bars – and into the sphere of space that two heavily armed men occupy. There's a message, there. A pity the sorrow and guilt in her voice garbles it beyond interpretation.

Silence follows.

Zevran slides his hand to the dagger hidden in his glove. The Dweomer Rune makes it feel strange to his touch; Dwarven steel hums beneath flesh, but the knife is silent.

Alistair shifts his weight, apparently uncomfortable with the awkward moment. Maybe he's bothered by the way Sens watches Jowan. Maybe he's just impatient. Either way, his mail chimes quietly as he moves.

"I'm sorry," Sens says.

That snaps Jowan out of his grief stupor. His head jerks up. "You're why she was even –"

"No. _She's_ why. She broke every vow she ever took. She chose to help you break into the repository." A pause, short but sharp, and then Sens adds, whisper-soft, "If it was a choice. And if it wasn't –"

"No! I never – I would never – I couldn't have –"

Sens sweeps a hand through the air as if to cut the topic away, then shakes her head. "You're the apostate Lady Isolde hired as a tutor?"

"Yes." Jowan lifts his gaze as he says it, most likely to make eye contact.

Sens laughs. Sort of. It's a short, choked sound that bounces once off the stone around them. "Poor boy probably thinks the Battle Of River Dane was in Blessed."

The imprisoned mage paces away for a bare second, then returns to the bars. He places his palm against one and says, "You know better than that. She wanted me to tutor Connor in magic."

That brings Alistair out of his reverie, or his meditations on why he doesn't knife imprisoned apostates, or whatever he was thinking about. "Connor? A mage? I can't believe it!"

Sens looks up and around, then. She stares at the corpses they've just re-killed for a second before asking, "So is it possible Connor started this? How much did you teach him?"

"There's no way he did it intentionally. He still struggles with the most basic of spells." Jowan heaves a sigh, shaking his head. "But it's possible he tore the Veil unintentionally. A powerful demon very well could have done all of this."

Sens looks away for a long moment. Zevran catches a glimpse of her face as she turns, but her expression is tight. Shuttered. She's locked away whatever she's thinking, leaving no emotional tells. The effort to do so is telling in itself.

She lays a hand on Alistair's shoulder, then squares herself in front of the cell. "I have your word that you did not cause this?"

"I was already down here when the walking dead and the Shades started appearing." He shakes his head. "I didn't even know any of it was happening until the arlessa had me – questioned."

A fine tremor runs through him at the last word. Zevran decides not to wonder just what the arlessa's methods were. He'll only end up wondering what might seem like torture to a mage who's so clearly been coddled.

Jowan's story continues in a stream of words Sens makes no attempt to stop. Whether she listens actively or the sounds just flow over and past her, he can't even begin to guess. How unfair, that she should be such a mystery! No wonder she and the qunari seem to get along so well.

"Nothing I could do or say appeased her. So they left me to rot."

"But why are you down here?"

"I poisoned the arl."

Alistair exhales, furious, and then draws in a breath to speak. He gets as far as "What?!" before Sens turns around.

Both Alistair and Leliana have claimed that the Warden has a temper to rival a half-dead dragon. Until the instant she turns to quiet Alistair, Zevran never quite believed them. For all he's seen of her, the Warden has never even seemed impatient.

He should have known better than to expect her temper to run hot. It doesn't. And his expectations only worsen the tense hook of her eyebrows, the stern, unyielding line she's locked her mouth into.

Alistair stops mid-word. His teeth click together audibly.

Zevran receives a momentary impression of staring down a blizzard – or an avalanche – before she turns back to Jowan.

"Why?"

"I was instructed to by Teyrn Loghain! He said Arl Eamon was a threat to Ferelden. That if I poisoned the arl, he'd make things right with the Circle."

The mage's words echo back to them. Sens makes no reply. Alistair shifts uncomfortably, making the shield sway. His eyebrows wince, but his mouth twists, puckered, as if he's simultaneously chewing his tongue to keep quiet and biting down on a lemon.

"All I wanted," Jowan says, softly, "was to be able to return. And now all I want is to make it right. To undo everything I've wrought."

Sens lays a hand against Alistair's arm again, perhaps in apology for the terrifying glare, and then paces away. She says nothing as she goes, and says nothing as she comes to rest before another cell. "And how do you fix this?"

Jowan looks up again. "I don't know. But I have to try. Please... help me fix this."

How quickly 'let me fix this' becomes 'help me fix this,' but Zevran holds his tongue, for now. He'll gain nothing pointing that out just yet. Especially since Alistair's temper frays by the instant; whether the Warden's mounting wrath stems from his templar training, the damage this mage has done to his family, or a mix of the two, Zevran cannot begin to guess. Nor would he: it's enough to see the way Alistair shifts his shoulders repeatedly, the way one hand clenches into a fist, the twitch along the bridge of his nose as his brows lower into a scowl and then smooth back out again.

Sens chooses that instant to turn back to them. She returns to them in a quick, purposeful stride. Her movements look almost crisp. "What would you have me _do_ Jowan? For that matter, even if I freed you, what would you do?"

Jowan has no answer for that.

"Am I to hand you a knife and hope for the best?"

That startles Zevran. It startles Alistair, too; they both share a look of shock. Is she talking about killing him?

"No! I'm never using it again. I've learned that much at least."

Zevran's still not precisely sure what's going on, but when he looks to Alistair, he sees Alistair begin to relax. Not by much, but even a miniscule improvement is an improvement.

Whatever answer Sens was looking for, Jowan must have given it, because rather than unsheath her belt knife, she nods. "You are certain that this is Connor's doing?"

"I'm sure it is. And I'm sure he never intended any of this. I've learned a little about unintended consequences."

Sens flinches. It's no mere facial tic. After all, he can't see her face. But he doesn't need to see her face to see the way she takes a quick, reflexive step backward. And he certainly doesn't need to see her face to watch the shudder roll along her spine.

She steps forward again immediately. This time she leaves no space between herself and the door. Instead, she presses in close to it. Before she speaks, she angles her head so that she's talking to Jowan just scant inches away from him, through a gap in the door's bars.

"You betrayed everything we were taught. You poisoned an innocent man." Despite the passion of her stance, her words are a rote, nearly emotionless litany; her voice is no better. It's cold enough to cut someone. "You schooled a child toward just enough power that he tore the Veil. And if we're very, very _lucky_, we might not have to kill him."

Jowan only looks down.

Sens watches him. At last, she heaves a sigh, and says, quietly, "And yet I can't hate you for any of it. I've even tried."

"So you'll let me help you?"

She shakes her head once: a firm _no_. "I'll not take you into this castle and let you cast a spell. Any spell. And without your magic..."

"Then what? Are you going to leave me here?"

_Like the arlessa_, Jowan doesn't say, but Zevran hears it anyway. Sens must hear it too, because she shakes her head again. "I failed you once, Jowan."

She steps forward, then. She touches two fingers to the lock and mumbles a word. Lightning jolts from her hand, flares blue and white and leaves violet afterimages. When it finally fades away, she grips the door and swings it open.

"There's a secret passage out of the dungeons. Today only, if they ask where you've gone, I didn't see you on my way in."

He steps toward the door, hesitating. "You're telling me to run?"

"You're good at it," she says. "I'd find some other clothes as soon as I could, if I were you."

He takes another step forward, crosses the threshold. He stops in front of her, looks down at her for a long, silent moment.

"I guess this is goodbye, then."

"Goodbye, lethallin," she says. "May your Maker watch over you."

More silence. And then he turns and stumbles away.

Sens turns to watch him go. She doesn't look away until he's vanished into the tunnel. He never looks back at her. If that hurts her, she doesn't show it. She's shuttered away all emotion again.

Zevran wants to know why.

***  
"You let him go!" Alistair delivers the accusation in a whisper as they climb the stairs from the dungeon.

Zevran decides not to take sides. How could he, a beneficiary of her mercy, complain that she shows it to someone else? Even if this Jowan did rather fail to impress.

"I betrayed him once already, even if I didn't mean to," she replies. She touches a hand to her throat, where a mirror-bright silver pendant hangs. "I couldn't do it again."

"He's a maleficar!"

"He's my little brother."

That makes Alistair stop abruptly. The sudden cessation of upward motion means the weight of his splintmail tries to drag him back down the steep stairs. Zevran reaches out to grab him by the shoulder until Alistair remembers his balance.

Loud, stealth-breaking calamity averted, he casts his memory back, scrutinizes both mages, scouring his recollections for evidence of relation. It's possible, though just barely, that Jowan is her half-brother. Half-elves always look human, after all. It's even possible that Sens is older than Jowan: city elves are a little longer-lived than humans and retain youthful appearances a little longer.

Dark hair, yes. But Jowan's face is round, maybe heart-shaped, while Sen's is all hard angles. His cheekbones aren't nearly high enough and his skin is far too pale. Even if they only shared one parent, he'd expect more similarities.

Alistair doesn't seem to have reached the same conclusion. Or perhaps he _can't_ reach a conclusion. Whichever the case, the failed attempts to process the idea show in his expression. Somewhere beneath the gaping confusion, horror dawns.

Zevran decides to take pity on the boy, just this once. "Figuratively, I'm sure."

Sens doesn't back down. "Jowan is as much my little brother as the arl is Alistair's uncle."

"Arl Eamon _is_ my uncle!"

"The arl is Cailan's uncle. Queen Rowan's brother. That doesn't make him your uncle."

"But he raised-! Oh."

Point made and point taken, apparently, because Alistair falls silent. It's not a contented silence. It's certainly not a defeated silence. He just needs time to process, to marshall his argument.

Zevran almost wishes him luck. He'll certainly need it. Whether the debate will end well or no, though, he's sure they haven't heard the last of the topic.

It turns out that Zevran was right: Sens freeing the maleficar resurfaces once Connor has fled deeper into the castle.

The arlessa, Teagan, and the Wardens debate their next course of action.

"I don't want to kill him any more than you do, Alistair. But we're low on options and time. If we're to enter the Fade, we'd need at least three magi and enough lyrium to give a dwarf a nosebleed."

"The Circle Tower is less than a day's trip around the lake!"

"That's a day there, a day back, and however long it takes to persuade them to help. Do we have that much time? How do we know that he's not going to raise his little army again come sundown?"

"You're willing to free a maleficar, but you won't try to save a child?"

"I freed a penitent apostate," she says, cold again. "A penitent apostate who doesn't have an army of corpses and hasn't said anything about wanting a town."

"He's just a boy. You can't seriously be thinking about killing him. Aren't you going to try to save something?"

"I _am_ trying to save something: this country."

That shocks Alistair into silence. The brittle coldness of her voice makes Lady Isolde take a startled step backward, while Teagan opens his mouth, closes it, and then tries to speak again.

"And you'll sacrifice an innocent to do it? How does that make you any better than-"

Sens goes still at that. Alistair quiets, too, and they look long and hard at each other. A fascinating and attractive tableau, the broad-shouldered man-at-arms and the petite, unyielding mage make. Zevran drinks in the sight.

At last, Sens looks away. "Very well. I'd hoped to take the kindest route..."

The humans all splutter. They cannot conceive of how simply killing the child might be the kindest choice. Zevran doesn't bother to hide his smirk. Idealists. How marvelously quaint!

"I'll go to the Circle," she says.

Zevran's amusement vanishes, deflating like a lung with a knife in it.

Alistair reaches for her hands, smiling with all the eager, unthinking joy of a puppy.

Sens cuts him off by stepping away. She moves to face the door Connor fled through, holds out a hand for silence. "Alistair, your duty is here. Sten, Morrigan, and Leliana will stay with you."

Alistair starts up an objection, or maybe it'll be just a question, but Sens turns to face him in a deliberate about-face. "You trained as a templar. You're uniquely qualified to handle an abomination. And you _will_ handle it, if the situation requires."

Zevran's amusement returns. She caved, yes, but not without finding a way to make him bleed for forcing her surrender. More and more he understands why she leads and the rest follow.

Sens turns to Sten and Leliana. "I refuse to return to a sacked estate, fresh recruits for the abomination's army, or any other nonsense. Do not fail me in this."

Sten nods, face grave. Leliana nods as well. There's no hiding the revulsion in her eyes as she contemplates what she may be called upon to do.

"Dog," she says, and jerks her head toward the door. The mabari trots out, panting, and then she says, "Zevran. With me."

He follows.

Just before she crosses the threshold, she turns to address Morrigan. "And Morrigan? I'll be very cross with you if I come back and somebody's dead."

Rather than be affronted at what might be seen as a threat, given the coldness of Sens's manner, Morrigan chuckles. "You have my word. I'll make sure the children are properly supervised."

Sens nods. But before she can leave, the arlessa finally speaks up again: "Warden... thank you."

"Thank Alistair. He's the one willing to risk dozens of lives on your son." After a beat, she adds, more gently, "And in the end, I don't think either of you will thank me for this."

With that, she crosses the threshold and sweeps from the room. Zevran casts one look at the group they're leaving behind, takes in Morrigan's amusement, Alistair's dawning disquiet, Sten's stoicism and the horror in Leliana's eyes. What has he landed himself in?


	2. the beginning or ending of a dream?

Trouble. That's what he's landed himself in. And a lot of it, too. A day on the road with the lovelier Warden isn't a terrible chore, despite the fact that she spends most of her time loping forward as a bear. Scares off any trash that might get blood on his armor, but it's rather difficult to converse with a dog – even a dog as uncannily smart as Dog is – and it's even more difficult to converse with a bear.

For one, he looks and feels crazy.

For another, it's completely impossible to judge her responses. And he's not even sure she understands him. Maybe she does and her expressiveness is limited, what with the "thirty-stone brown bear" thing. Or maybe she genuinely doesn't – although, if she doesn't understand his words, how does she remember her purpose? For that matter, how does she remember not to carve into him with those enormous paws?

Dog seems to have no trouble with the fact that his master outweighs him by an order of magnitude. He trots around them, sometimes forging off into the underbrush, sometimes racing ahead barking madly about something only dogs can sense.

They settle into a comfortable enough pace. And Zevran falls into a mildly amusing running patter. It's all meaningless, of course; words meant to fill the air and make the journey seem less silent. But Sens never changes shape to tell him to stop.

The Warden drifts closer to him as he speaks. He fights the temptation to reach out and scratch the bear behind its ears. She clearly does understand him.

Shadows lengthen as the day wears on. Sens's long, heavy strides shorten, gradually, as she tires. Finally, she stumbles to a stop. She rests on her haunches like a very large, very absurd dog, and lets out a strange whine.

Dog races toward her. He butts his head against her shoulder, then tenses, bristling, as she changes back. Soon enough, she stands on two feet and wears studded leather rather than pounds and pounds of muscle and fur.

"I need to rest for an hour," she says. "And don't tell me you're not tired."

"Don't worry on my account; I can go all night." It's cringe-worthy at most, but it's the best jab he can offer when he's busy wanting to watch Bann Teagan and the arlessa suffer all seven stages of lanthrax poisoning.

First they have to save that fool village from itself, then they spend a night fighting flaming undead, and then they waste daylight hours with some ridiculous ceremony? He hasn't begun to feel the fatigue just yet, but he knows that when he does, it will come with bone tiredness.

Teagan should have been unlocking that passage with his signet ring at dawn. Either that, or he should have let them try to rest, rather than keeping the Wardens up and searching for straggling monsters or distressed survivors until dawn.

The Warden doesn't seem to notice the innuendo, or perhaps she doesn't care. She merely turns on her heel and strides away from the road. He follows after, and almost wishes Alistair was about to trade stares with. At least then he'd have somebody around who understood the strangeness of this journey.

* * *

The journey only gets stranger: the ferry to the Circle Tower is closed. No-one has said as much, but an armed and irritated-looking templar stands with his arms crossed at the end of the dock.

Sens stops short, swivels to scan the area for something. She must see it, because she immediately moves toward the man who is _not_ standing on the dock.

"Well, look at this! I remember taking you across when you left with that fellow, Duncan."

Sens curves her mouth into a pleasant, polite smile. But she doesn't show teeth, and it doesn't last long. "Good day, Kester."

"Hey... you know what's going on at the Tower? They took my boat and Greagoir won't tell me nothing."

That makes Sens narrow her eyes for a moment, but then her mouth curves up again. "I hadn't heard that anything was happening at the tower. Perhaps I should go and see."

"Greagoir told me to stay over here till it blows over, but some storms don't blow over easy."

Sens's eyes narrow again, but the look she exchanges with Zevran as she drifts away from Kester is placid.

"I take it we are to be the bearers of bad news, should we return to Redcliffe," he says. He keeps his voice quiet and steps a little deeper into the tall grass that grows by the lake.

Sens follows. Her face has shuttered closed again. "We can't leave yet. I should resolve whatever's going on."

"We don't even know what the problem is, or how long that would take. Is this child worth the risk?"

"I have treaties compelling the Circle of Magi to aid me against the Blight. I'll have to either solve whatever this is then, or handle the ill-will that not helping when I had the chance will garner."

"Two birds, one stone, is it? I think I like this side of you."

Her lips twitch again. But rather than both corners of her mouth curling up in her fake, polite smile, she gives him what might almost be a half-smile.

She looks from Kester to the templar again, and then looks down at Dog. "Let's move."

With that, she heads for the templar.

The templar gives her a startled look, then looks between the two of them and the dog. He doesn't seem to know what to make of a mage in studded leather, a heavily armed elf, and a war hound.

"If you're looking to get across, you can't. The Knight-Commander gave strict orders not to let anyone pass."

Sens shifts her stance, folds her arms across her chest. "I'm a Grey Warden, and I have business at the Tower. Who are you to keep me out?"

"I am the person appointed to stop all unauthorized access to the Circle Tower. Meaning you. Because you're unauthorized."

"Are you sure? I thought your name was Carroll."

"That doesn't matter! I've one job, and one job only, and by the Maker's shiny gold cutlery, I will do it!"

"Carroll, take me to the Tower."

Carroll heaves an exaggerated sigh. "No entrance to the Tower. We just went through this. Pay attention."

Sens turns to give him a significant look. It's a flat, unimpressed expression, and he catches a hint of narrowed eyes before she turns back to Carroll. She rests one hand on her hip, lets the other fall.

Zevran doesn't need more than that to know what to do. He shifts his stance into a relaxed but alert position and lets one hand linger on the hilt of his sword. It's a simple matter to tense visibly.

"My patience is wearing thin," she says. The tone is bland, but that, Zevran suspects, is what makes it so effective. Regardless of his theory, her tone manages to carry a hint of _Do you want to find out how well you can swim in that armor?_

Or maybe he he's the one who carries the threat, but either way, Carroll looks between the two of them. He even swallows. Visibly. "Oh, is that bad? I'm just trying to do my job, here."

"It's bad enough," Zevran says, before Sens can spur the templar into more asinine oaths, "and it will only be worse if you don't take us to the Tower, my friend. Now."

"All right, all right, I'll take you," Carroll says. "But if Greagoir says you can't go in, you can just _swim_ back over, for all I care!"

Zevran waves a hand. "Less talking, my cutlery-obsessed friend, and more untying the boat from the dock before we lose patience."

"I'm not obsessed," Carroll replies, bending down to work at the knotted rope that holds the skiff to the dock.

Zevran opens his mouth to answer back, but Sens holds out a hand for silence. "Let's just get to the Tower and deal with whatever we find there."

Carroll lets out a snort of laughter, then shakes his head. "Confident, aren't we? You'll see what's wrong soon enough."

Perhaps Zevran is just too suspicious for his own good, but that does not sound like a good omen to him.

* * *

Apparently, Zevran's paranoia was justified. The first thing they see on arrival is a half-dozen Templars running scared as Rialto rats. The second thing they see is a man who surely must be the Knight-Commander looking haggard and worn, giving orders to a pair of Templars without ever lifting his brow from his hands. The third thing they see is two great doors closed and barred, with a pair of Templars standing watch.

Sens picks up her pace. The leather straps of her armor click and swish as she moves. Zevran tilts his head to get a better view, but alas! A frightened templar crosses behind her, and by the time Zevran has dragged his attention away from the twitchy men in plate mail and swords, Sens has come to a stop in front of the man in charge. Zevran angles himself so that he can see her face while she speaks to the Knight-Commander.

"Knight-Commander Greagoir?"

The man finally lifts his head. And when he does, his expression changes much the way Jowan's had. "You again. I did not expect to see you here." He turns to Carroll. "I gave explicit orders that no one was to cross."

"I have come to help, Knight-Commander. Why are the great doors barred?"

Greagoir looks toward the doors, then back to Sens, and sighs. "I shall speak plainly: the Tower is no longer under our control."

Sens's eyes widen just barely enough for him to see. "What happened?"

"Abominations and demons stalk the tower's halls. I do not know where they originated, but I know we were nearly overrun."

"And so you bar the doors, locking any survivors in?"

"Not one abomination may be allowed to cross that threshold. You know this. And it is too painful to hope for survivors and find nothing."

"Says the man who barred the doors."

Greagoir's eyes flash. "If we go in now, we will be massacred. I will not order my men to their deaths in search of survivors they will not find. While those doors hold, until the Right of Annulment arrives, we wait."

Sens shakes her head. "I wasn't asking you to go in. But we magi aren't helpless. There must be some survivors."

"If there are, the Maker himself must have shielded them."

"You won't send your men into a massacre, very well. But let me in. I'll look for survivors."

Oh. How exciting. He has just been volunteered to cleanse the Tower of abominations. As if dealing with the one back in Redcliffe wasn't enough. Hurrah.

He looks down at Dog, who is sniffing the air with great interest. "Is your mistress always this... driven, or is it something about mages?"

Dog only whines.

"Yes, I agree. Go team." Zevran sighs.

And yet again, he wonders just what he's gotten himself into.

* * *

The great doors close behind them. Zevran turns his head to look back, half-mourning the loss of air that doesn't stink of blood and corpses. Even more, he finds himself faintly unsettled by the possibility that he'll never see those doors open again.

He's unused to the sensation of wanting to live.

Dog whuffs once, then presses his nose to the bloody ground and follows a trail only dogs can detect. He leads them into a room full of beds and footlockers. Two teens lie dead on the floor, but Dog ignores the bodies, leading them straight to a footlocker.

Sens kneels to inspect it. She lifts the lid, dark eyes scanning its contents for something of note, and then finally stands with a scrap of parchment clenched in her fist. She smooths it out and reads it, then passes it to him.

He reads and winces. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Watchguard of the Reaching," Sens murmurs, as if that's supposed to mean something to him. She looks back to the note in his hand.

He gives it back, glad enough to be rid of the macabre little still-life.

Dog doesn't point out anything else of note once they leave the dorm. In fact, it's Sens who stops at a tangle of bodies, just past the door in the second dorm. She hauls one of the bodies away from the others and lets out a soft cry.

There are children amongst the dead. He should have expected it, but it's all but impossible to imagine mage children.

It seems to hit Sens hard. She stares for a few seconds before turning away. He thinks he sees tears in her eyes, but she's gone and past him too quickly to be sure.

Dog lets out a whine and hurries to follow her. Zevran nicks a coin purse from the body of a fallen Templar before he follows them, to give Sens time to put her mask back on.

Past the second dorm, they find survivors. A few sobbing children, a shell-shocked pair of adults, a teenager with a hundred-yard stare.

And an aging mage. The white-haired woman is in the process of destroying some sort of faintly horrifying _thing_ made of lava. Sens shrugs her staff free and surges forward, but the other mage makes the air turn bitter cold before Sens can reach her.

Ice crystals form on the edge of Zevran's drawn dagger, and the stone floor slicks over. The slickness sends Dog careening, nearly into a wall, and the war hound whimpers. Zevran thinks better of following Sens, who has stopped moving and is now clutching an outcropping of wall for support.

The thing made of lava hisses as the cold reaches it. Steam boils out from its skin, and sparks jump away. But the cold only grows, and Zevran watches, fascinated, as the fire dies and the thing collapses.

The old woman turns on her heel to regard them.

He can tell the instant she recognizes Sens. Just like Jowan and Gregoir, this woman's expression changes. Unlike Jowan and Gregoir, she actually looks pleased to see Sens.

"You? What are you doing here? Why did the Templars let you through?"

"I'm here to help," Sens says. "We have little time. The Right of Annulment hasn't arrived, but it could be here any day now."

"So Gregoir intends to annul the Circle. He probably thinks we are all dead." The mage's expression changes again, into a hard determination that wouldn't look out of place on Sens's face. "But even trapped as we are, we have managed to survive."

"Has the first enchanter survived as well?"

The mage gives Sens a keen look. "Ah, yes, Irving was your mentor, wasn't he? If anyone could survive, he could."

"Good," Sens says. "Those doors won't open until Irving tells Gregoir that the Circle has been cleansed."

"Then we must move, and quickly. You will help me save the Circle, will you not?"

"Of course, Wynne," Sens says, and it's the first time he's heard her tone soften quite like this.

The other mage – Wynne – moves toward the door. "I have erected a barrier to block more abominations from getting in. I will remove it, if you're ready."

"I'm ready. Bring it down."

"Be careful. I have no idea what manner of beasts lurk beyond this barrier."

Zevran chuckles. "Do not fear, my good lady. Our Grey Warden is very good at fending off attackers. Speaking from experience here."

* * *

As they run past the barrier and through blood-strewn halls, Zevran can't help but note that the Tower doesn't use all of its space. They've blocked off portions of the hallway with strange, latticed, cage-like walls. It doesn't make much sense to him, but neither does locking dozens of people in one building and practically never letting them out, even for air or sunlight.

Then he sees the havoc wrought in their library. He's seen a few libraries before, seen rows and rows and shelves and shelves of books. They seemed almost like Chantries dedicated to knowledge, or perhaps pretention.

This library just looks like an abattoir. The fighting has toppled bookshelves, has overturned tables, has spilled books and scrolls and papers all over the floor. He sees bloody footprints and handprints everywhere, and tries to breathe through his mouth to avoid smelling whoever had his bowels cut into.

Dog's nails click against the stone floor, and the poor hound skids in a smear of something slippery. It sends him into a pile of books, which immediately tumble to the ground.

Something screams, not from fear, but from pure fury.

Four figures emerge from behind one of stacks and rush toward them. Zevran draws his blades and moves not quite to intercept. Instead, he flings himself behind them and strikes at the first target he can. He hears Sens mumble incantations, hears gusts of flame and the crackle of lightning, while Wynne sends spells that soothe, that energize, shivering along his spine.

Time slows. He lashes out with each blade in turn, darting away from each target just after he strikes. It's tiring; it's more than tiring: it's exhausting. But it seems effective.

At long last, the creatures collapse.

That's when he notices the sticky mess that stains one's fingers and mouth.

He forces his gaze away and wipes down his blades on the cleanest rug he can find.

Snes moves ahead of him as they continue through the library. Every now and then, she stops to pull a scrap of paper from a book, or to untangle and read a few lines of a fallen scroll. When he's not patting down corpses, she lets him read over her shoulder, and he has to say he's not fond of the picture this particular apprentice's notes paint.

He follows her through the end of the library, and up the stairs.

The second floor doesn't look nearly so bad. Sens takes the last step up and stops, looking around. She tilts her head to one side, then moves straight for a room opposite the stairs. It's separated from the main hall by those strange cage walls.

Zevran moves in front of her, gestures with one arm for her to stay behind him. This hall is clean, and that sets him on edge.

Someone in drab robes hurries out of the room Sens was headed for. "Please, refrain from going into the stockroom. It is a mess and I have not been able to get it into a state fit to be seen."

That brings Zevran up short, and makes both Sens and Wynne stop, as well.

Sens is the first to recover. "Owain? What are you doing here?"

Ah, so a person known to her. Well, that at least makes him somewhat less likely to turn on them. Or so Zevran hopes.

The shabbily-dressed man nods. "Yes. It is I, Owain. You remember. I was trying to tidy up, but there was little I could do."

The eerie tidiness that bothered him begins to make sense now. It's still enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck. Every word the man says seems to intensify the sensation of something not being right.

"Don't you want out of here?"

Owain blinks. His brown robes and slightly too-wide eyes make him look owlish in the dim light. "I tried to leave, when things got quiet. That was when I encountered the barrier. Finding no other way out, I returned to work."

And yet again Zevran senses something gravely wrong. What sort of person could return to work tidying things with crazed mages and demons and abominations on the loose? At the very least, this man should have been hiding quietly somewhere, and possibly praying that anything in the Tower would pass him by.

If Wynne or Sens detect any oddities about the use of ice-cold logic in a situation like this – when most people would be anything but logical – they give no sign. In fact, Wynne lets out a soft gasp and says, with mild reproach, "Owain, you should have said something! I would have opened the door for you."

Owain spreads his hands. "The stockroom is familiar. I prefer to be here."

Curioser and curioser. Actually, more and more unsettling.

Sens sweeps a hand through the air, as if to cut away all the unimportant personal details. "Have you seen any abominations?"

"No. I suppose I should count myself lucky," Owain says, but he doesn't sound at all like he thinks he's lucky. "I would prefer not to die. I would prefer it if the Tower returned to the way it was. Perhaps Niall will succeed and save us all."

Wonderful. There's at least one other person attempting to resolve this situation. It shouldn't be surprising, but then he thinks back to the slaughtered teens and children, the abattoir in the library, and wonders if this Niall is even alive.

"Succeed at what?"

"I do not know, but he came here with several others, and took the Litany of Adralla."

Wynne gasps again. "But that protects from mind domination. Is blood magic at work here?"

"I do not know."

"Niall _was_ in the meeting. He would know. Blood magic... I was afraid of this."

"We'll handle it," Sens says, her tone just as hard as it was when she told Alistair that he would _handle_ the abomination if necessary.

"We should find Niall. The Litany will give us a fighting chance against any blood mages we encounter."

"I wish you luck. Perhaps this will be over soon and things will return to the way they were." Owain seems to dismiss them, for he nods once and returns to his stockroom.

Sens and Wynne move away from the stockroom and into a long, round hallway. He and Dog follow. Dog presses his nose to the ground, interested in the many trails of blood and viscera, but he never acts as though he's found something important.

Zevran stretches his arms behind his head, rubs his scalp idly just underneath his braid. "So this Owain fellow... did he seem unnaturally calm to you? Very calm and logical for a man surrounded by insane horrors and dead bodies."

"He's a Tranquil," Sens replies, as if that explains everything. Perhaps it even does. "They're all like that."

"Tranquil mages," Wynne adds, perhaps sensing his confusion at Sens's answer, "are cut off from the Fade. They do not dream, they cannot be possessed, they cannot perform magic... and they no longer feel."

Sens stops to slide open a door. There's only one abomination in this room, which she freezes. Dog rushes forward and slams his shoulders into the frozen abomination, causing it to topple to the ground and shatter.

Sens moves toward a bookshelf, pulling a book off and thumbing through it idly. A slight frown creases the bridge of her nose. "He compared it to falling into ice-water."

Perhaps an apt comparison, he thinks. He turns away from the mage leafing through books and the mage staring solemnly at a corpse.

* * *

Are abominations easier or harder to kill than darkspawn? Zevran can't quite decide. Many of the abominations have twisted, misshapen forms that expose their weakest points just by existing. But they have strength he's seen only from the man-sized 'hurlocks' and more tenacity than the dwarf-like 'genlocks.' No, tenacity is the wrong word.

These abominations are simply unwilling to die. They cling to life out of nothing but spite and hatred of whoever's trying to kill them.

Zevran twists his wrist and pulls up, snarling curses in three languages under his breath. The deformities are nice, easy places to sink a blade into, but the strange geometries of the flesh impede him getting his blades out again.

At last he takes a step back. His gloves are slick with blood and something else; his grip on the hilt keeps sliding. If he keeps this up much longer, his hand is going to slip right past the hilt-guard and onto the edge.

"Dog," he growls. "Fetch Zevran's sword."

Dog whuffs and lunges for the dead abomination. Two huge forepaws land on the corpse's thick, wrinkled hump.

In the same instant, he sees a thin blue line, jagged and sparking like lightning, flicker over all the exposed flesh. The line flares, winks, and then vanishes.

Whatever it is, whatever it means, it can't be good. But just as he opens his mouth to order Dog away, the flicker returns, flares once, then brighter, turns white –

It's a sound so loud he doesn't hear it. Heat bears down on him, crushes him; it's like being six again and Claudia boxing his ears, both at once with something pulled out of the oven. The air itself sears his skin in a rush of _no, no, too hot_ and his back slams into something hard.

It's one single moment too white to see, too hot to feel, too loud to hear; it's a racking and the poker and being pressed all at once.

He comes to with the older mage – what was her name? Lynne? No, Wynne – kneeling over him. Her hands glow a color that looks blue-white but tastes green. For a second, he hears nothing at all, then the hiss and crack of burning flesh, then rushing air, and then voices.

"–an, can you hear me?"

"Now I can," he says. His parched throat cracks his voice.

"That's a good sign, then. The wall hurt your back, certainly, but the true danger was the force and the heat." She stands, smooths a hand along her girdle. She moves too far for him to see out of the corners of his eyes, but he aches too much to turn his head.

She returns with a bowl of water. He accepts it, drinks as quickly as he dares. They need to move. Don't want to imagine when yet _more_ abominations will find them, or what they'll do if even one of them is incapacitated.

He drags himself upright, leaning heavily against the wall for a moment.

Sens strides into view, carrying his sword. A bloodied roll of parchment twines around her other arm, hanging in shreds.

And then Dog comes trotting after her. He dodges around her legs and makes a straight line for Zevran.

He braces himself for the impact of far too many pounds of muscle against his knees, but Dog stops just in front of him. The hound pants for a moment, smiling his strange dog smile, and then whuffs happily. He nudges his nose against Zevran's knee.

"Ah, yes, you're glad to see your secret supply of bacon drippings hasn't been fried himself," he says. "I must say I am glad to see this too, even if I know where I stand in comparison to the dog."

"It was simple triage, actually," Wynne says. Her tone is mild, but brooks no argument. "The mabari nearly died. You were in no such danger."

And, indeed, Dog is entirely missing several patches of fur. The tops of his forepaws are completely bare, and covered in the silvery still-healing scar tissue left by healing magic. The scars extend up his front legs, onto one shoulder, and up onto his neck and face.

"No more fetching Zevran's sword from dead abominations. Agreed, _cucciolo_?"

Dog gives him a happy bark.

He bends down, creakily, to scratch Dog behind the ears. "Shall we, then?"

Sens looks at him a moment, then reaches into the satchel slung across her back. She pulls out a small vial and offers it to him.

He accepts the vial, pops the cork. His mouth twists at the taste of elfroot, but within moments, the aches have gone.

Dog stays close to him as they continue through the Tower.

* * *

He thought Sens and Alistair were uncanny, and they are. Even more uncanny? Possessed Templars. He's no expert on the Circle or the Chantry, but isn't the very point of being a Templar _not_ to be possessed?

"How did you manage this?" Sens sounds mystified - and a little eager, as if she's greedy for the secret, or envious that the demon managed it first.

"I saw his desire for a home, a family. Even he didn't know he wanted it. And I gave it to him."

Zevran tilts his head to shift his view. The templar does look happy. Drugged, perhaps – certainly not all there, but happy. "Hmm, companionship that is only in the mind. All the fun, none of the clean up."

Dog growls, and Sens makes a noise low in her throat. It's not quite a growl, but the sound sends chills down his spine. Not a remark she agreed with, then? Or is she angry at the demon?

The demon spreads her hands, as if she's helpless. "He hated his life before; resented the Circle, resented his vows. Is he not much happier, now?"

"But it's based on a lie."

The demon chuckles. "Truth or lie, what does it matter? He is happy nonetheless."

Wrong answer. Both Dog and Sens growl again, and Zevran pulls his sword free of the sheath.

"I will tell you once: release him."

"I cannot," the demon says. "His life is as much bound in mine as mine is in his. To release him would kill us both."

"I see," Sens says, and raises her staff.

The tip of her staff taps the ground once, and both demon and Templar frost over. The staff falls to the floor, clattering along the stone until it finally rests.

Zevran moves forward, intent on reaching the demon and her thrall before they can interrupt the change. And perhaps before the swipe of a bear's paw can shatter them.

He ducks around behind the Templar and his pet demon – or the demon and her pet Templar? - and strikes at an area not covered in ice: a sweet spot between the Templar's third and fourth ribs. The dagger slides in, easily, and he spins away to land an angled cut along the demon's lower back.

A bear roars.

He catches sight of something huge, brown, and angry and slips backward. The bear lashes out, its enormous paw – so much bigger than Sens's actual hands, he realizes – slapping the Templar in the chest. The Templar topples, but thaws enough to catch himself.

The demon thaws, too.

After that, it all goes to hell. The bear turns on the demon and opens bloody gashes in its stomach. The demon screams, then, a blood-curdling sound made even worse by the way the Templar echoes it.

Zevran stalks the Templar through the room, drawing his attention away from Wynne time and again. Dog joins him, snapping at the man's knees and ankles, ramming into him to distract him or unbalance him.

Dog's efforts let Zevran slip behind the Templar. He strikes down with his sword, smacking the flat of the blade against the inside of the Templar's wrist. It distracts the Templar enough that Zevran wraps both arms around him, pulls his head back, and –

The demon falls to the ground in the same moment that the Templar does.

Zevran bends down, wipes his blades on the Templar's mantle. When he stands, Wynne is frowning. Her lips purse, and she opens her mouth to speak, but then she shakes her head and turns to Sens. She repeats the process: frown, lips purse, mouth opened to speak.

"We did the right thing, I'm sure," Wynne says.

Sens, being a giant bear, says nothing at all. She simply shakes the blood off her paws, picks her staff up in her mouth, and strides from the room.

Zevran moves to follow her. He leans down to stroke Dog's scar tissue, just because he can.

* * *

After that, Zevran moves to the front of the group, and takes Dog with him. He and Dog become the vanguard, despite the fact that he's best suited for back stabbing and Dog isn't even five feet tall.

He's the one to push open the final door on the third floor. And he and Dog are the first in the room to confront –

Actually, what _is_ that? Humanoid, and twisted like an abomination, but different somehow.

That's when the thing notices them. It turns around. There's a moment of staring, and then it says, slowly, "Oh, look. Visitors. I'd entertain you but... too much effort involved."

"Good," Sens says. "What have you done with that mage?"

"He's just resting. Poor lad, he was so very, very weary. You want to join us, don't you?"

"No," she replies, her tone hardening.

"Niall," Wynne murmurs.

Sens shifts her grip on her staff. "Release him or I kill you, demon."

"But why? Aren't you tired of all the violence in this world? I know I am."

He can feel his eyelids growing heavy.

"Why do you fight? You deserve more... You deserve a rest. The world will go on without you."

"What is this?" He has to snort at the stupidity. "Some ridiculous ploy to get me to let down my guard?"

But even as he says that, it's getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open. He reaches out a hand, tries to steady himself, but his entire body feels leaden.

He barely hears Wynne talking about resistance as he slides to his knees.

The floor is slick – and in some places sticky – with blood, but the blood is still warm, and it's not as if that matters, anyway. It's not his blood, after all.

* * *

The knives are a sharp, burning agony. He closes his eyes and inhales, forces himself to relax into them.

Jerking away will only make the cuts deeper, more dangerous. Best to just yield his body to the blades now and breathe past the pain.

So he breathes, and holds his breath, and counts seconds, and waits for them to finish with the knives. They'll move to something else soon enough.


	3. my lord who hums

What is pain to a Crow?

The ropes chafed his skin at first. Probably they're still chafing, but he's lost them in the mass of fire that his shoulders have become. Each arm socket burns, sends sparks spiraling down his arms. His legs are just as bad.

But the pain is so broad, so ever-present, that he closes his eyes for a second. Just long enough to draw in a breath and count. In and one, two, three; now out. In and one -

One of them turns the crank. The rack creaks.

Rhythm. Focus. Breathe past the pain. What is pain to a Crow? Breathe in, hold one, two, three. Breathe out.

"I think I saw him flinch that time," one remarks.

The crank turns again, not much, but it's enough to put even more strain on him.

Breathe. In, hold, out. Breathe. In, hold, out. He can do this. He won't break. In, hold, out.

"Maybe," the other allows. This one seems bent on the idea of breaking Zevran completely, or perhaps of proving his weakness. "We'll make you scream yet, apprentice."

The first chuckles. "We're not going to go easy on you, trust me."

He opens his mouth to reply, and one of them turns the crank again, and the rhythm doesn't stop the groan.

"No," he says, trying to remember his breathing rhythm again. He takes a quick breath, thinks maybe he's found it. "I wouldn't –" his breath hitches, "want you to. I'd be disappointed if you did."

Both of the journeymen laugh. One says, still chuckling, "This one has spirit. It's a shame we have to break him."

Zevran doesn't bother to reply. He closes his eyes again, then opens them and focuses on his breathing.

A woman's voice cuts into the conversation: "I'll not have you threaten him."

He knows that voice from somewhere. Knows the woman, but he's not sure how. His distraction as he tries to place her makes him lose what rhythm he'd picked back up, and his breath hisses through his teeth.

Zevran looks up, turns his head despite the ache in his shoulders. The woman he sees is vaguely familiar: dark-skinned, dark-haired, a faded clan tattoo drummed around her eyes and along her cheeks.

Could it be–?

"What? What are you doing here? You're not – you're not supposed to be here."

"Zevran," she says. Her tone is hard, and that sparks the beginnings of memories. But his recollection cuts off, sharply, preventing him from making any definite connection. "Snap out of it. This is a dream."

"Snap... out?" He stops to take a breath, shakes his head. "This is my test. I need to show them I can tolerate – pain. I'm going to be a Crow."

That last he says with more certainty than he actually feels. He tries to draw strength from his own tone, but the rest of him is too busy trying not to break.

The woman frowns. "You're already a Crow."

"What? That can't be."

He needs time. He needs air. He needs to be able to think. So he breathes, and counts, and frees a corner of his mind to deal with this woman. Her expression has not changed at all, but she grips a stave so hard her knuckles have whitened.

That is not the face or bearing of a liar. And, less tangibly, the words _already a Crow_ feel true.

"You're telling the truth? So what is this, a bad dream? A bad memory?"

One of the journeymen tenses. "Oh, I think he's questioning us. That's a very, very bad thing to do, isn't it?"

"Yes," the other replies. "Yes, it is. We'll have to punish him for that." A pause, in which one of them chuckles nastily, and then he adds, "Severely."

Their faces are changing. He thinks he must be dreaming, for a moment, because those are not faces he remembers ever seeing. The masks only shift a little, enough for teeth to elongate and eyes to take a slightly different shape, but it's enough.

They're not elves. They're not human, either. In fact, they're not alive.

This _is_ a dream.

The ropes that ensnared his wrists disappear. The horrible sensation of stretching, of joints and limbs being pulled past the breaking point, vanishes in an instant.

He curls himself upright, sits on the edge of the rack, and then stands. As he rises, recent events tumble back into his recollection. It's like taking a step, only to realize he's stepped off a roof and should have prepared for a ten-foot leap.

He's an ex-Crow, she's a Grey Warden, he was hired to kill her –

And even as he processes all of this, she raises her staff. After a moment of silence, she murmurs words that mean little to him. Ice encases one of the journeymen. She whirls, raising her staff again. A fire bursts into life and the other journeyman flails backwards.

Zevran draws his dagger. He darts toward the closest, stepping in behind the journeyman. It's too busy being on fire to notice the rogue sneaking up behind it.

Perhaps he shouldn't – as if shouldn't or should have any meaning at all – but he takes great satisfaction at sliding the dagger in between the demon-journeyman-thing's third and fourth ribs. Its flesh makes a wet sound, a sound he's heard all too often, but being on fire and being knifed in the ribs doesn't seem to slow it down much.

It turns halfway, trying to ram a shoulder into him to drive him back.

Zevran closes his eyes, braces for the burn, and takes a minuet-step both into range and into the right position. He grabs the demon by the scalp, pulls backward, and cuts a curve from just under one ear to just under the other.

Turns out certain Antivan superstitions are wrong: demons do bleed. Copiously, in fact. Zevran makes a mental note to point this out to Claudia should he ever see her again, and then turns to handle the other one.

He and Sens really need to discuss her habit of stealing his kills, he decides as he watches the frozen demon topple backwards and shatter. Frozen chunks of flesh skitter along the ground in a landscape that is very distinctly _not_ the testing dungeon where he surpassed the rack, years ago.

Sens resumes her two-legged form. She's breathing a little heavily as she steps away from the now dismembered demon.

"Well! That was bracing! There's nothing like a good racking, is there?"

She opens her mouth to reply, but then she turns hazy, like a heat shimmer.

And then she's gone. He falls through warm, sticky darkness. It covers him, almost smothers him. It's velvet bedsheets and a pyre shroud at once.

* * *

The darkness recedes to reveal a barren, desert landscape much like the one he just left. But this time the Sloth demon stands before them, rather than figures from his memory.

It's even uglier than he remembers it being. Zevran feels his mouth twist. "What? What happened to those luscious wood nymphs?"

Wynne gives him an imperious look with her lips drawn tight, as if she's just tasted something sour, and he half shrugs. "They were much better company than this ugly _imbecile_. Then again, what wouldn't be better company than our friend here?"

It doesn't bother to respond to him directly. Instead, it paces on its end of the clearing, and he could swear he sees a glint of... something in it dull eyes.

"You should go back. I promise you'll be much happier this time," it says, its voice still slow like the endless drone of flies around a corpse.

Zevran's lip curls in disgust. Happier? It trapped him in one of his most physically painful memories, and it's offering to make him happier?

He chances a glance at his companions, certain that neither woman could be stupid enough to fall for that, but needing to make sure nonetheless. But he was right: Sens's expression has not changed from the usual stoic mask. Wynne looks at the Sloth demon with pursed lips and a wrinkled nose, as if it's some filthy-smelling prank a teenaged boy has pulled, and she's the one who's going to have to clean it up.

Perhaps that's not such an inaccurate description.

Dog growls low in his throat.

Honestly speaking, Zevran concurs. Sometimes, there's just no expressing the depth of one's loathing and fury for an idea except by narrowing one's eyes and making a throat noise.

"Selfish," the Sloth demon says, and Zevran tunes out the rest of that too-slow voice.

Instead, he focuses on the line of the demon's body. On the tense and flicker of its muscles, on the way it holds up a hand to cast a spell. He's killed mages before. He refuses to let this demon be any different.

But the demon is different. For one, its changes are far faster than Sens's. Just as Zevran has dodged around behind it, the demon throws up its hands. He falls backwards, strikes his back hard against the desert landscape of the Fade, and curls.

When he can move, he stands and sees that the demon is now a very, very large... thing. Grey-skinned and horned, with massive hands.

"Ogre," he hears Sens breathe, just before she blasts him with ice.

Zevran darts away from the spray of cold, skirting around ground that freezes solid, and is quite happy to push the point of his sword into the demon's armpit.

The demon roars and turns. It swipes at him. He drifts back, just barely out of its grasp.

Something stomps on the ground. He staggers at the shockwave, watches the demon and Dog stumble. He scans the battleground, feels his eyes widen at the sight of a ten-foot golem.

Light flashes, and the golem is Sens. Flashes again, and Sens is on fire. This fact doesn't seem to worry her.

The demon howls pain when it, too, begins to flame. Unlike Sens, its skin smokes and chars and peels. The scent of burnt flesh boils so strong that Zevran can taste it, tastes pork and his own blood, and hears his skin burning again –

Zevran sees lightning. Purple spots dance before his eyes and he stumbles back. When he can balance, when he can see five feet in front of his face, a burbling, hissing Rage Demon stands in the ogre's place.

But if Sens can become a golem and this demon can become an ogre, then he has just the weapon for this. He casts aside his sword, focuses on memory, and draws a dagger he hasn't carried since before he left Antiva from the sheath on his back, then pulls the hidden dagger from his glove.

The remembered dagger shines like ice, and well it should. The hilt frosts over and even feels cold to the touch.

The Rage Demon does not like the taste of it. He can tell because of the way it shrieks when the blade bites into its back. He takes a certain pleasure in plunging it in deep, in watching the demon's too-hot, sinister looking flesh part for metal so cold it must be unbearable.

The demon's movements gradually slow. Zevran keeps cutting with the ice-enchanted dagger. The demon screams at each cut. Its screams satisfy something in him, ease the tension of a knot he didn't even know he'd tied himself in.

He stabs viciously. "Payback's a harsh mistress, no?"

The demon makes no reply, but the sky burns in one giant sunburst of light, of heat. When he can move again, he stands, gingerly, and casts aside the good dagger. Frost no longer forms along the sharpest parts; the blade's edge looks cracked and worn.

He recognizes all too well the demon's latest form: an Abomination. He knows that shape, knows its weaknesses, knows how it moves.

There has to be a catch, he thinks as he kicks away his smoking, cracked dagger and darts for the longsword.

But whatever the catch, Zevran blitzes forward. Dog rushes, too, and he snaps the longsword's edge along one of the demon's deformities even as Dog sinks his teeth into its leg. The demon cries out its pain in one long, burbling, ear-splitting whine.

The ground beneath them shakes again. Zevran barely maintains a semblance of balance and looks around, trying to find the source of the –

Ah, Wynne, if the look of concentration and the rigor mortis grip on her staff is any indication.

Somewhere, a spider hisses. He doesn't want to turn back to the demon; the trip through this damnable Tower has given him fodder enough for a lifetime of fresh nightmares.

But he turns anyway. Just as he suspected: an overlarge spider tangles with a deformed Abomination. It's like some demented child decided to put the two ugliest things in Thedas in the same room. The Abomination bleeds and viscera trail from a gash in its stomach, which of course only adds loveliness to the portrait that is even now burning itself into his brain.

He wants to be violently ill in three different colors. He also wants never to have seen it. He also wants to wake up.

He pushes away the extraneous thoughts, the extraneous desires. He forces his mouth into a smile to keep from gagging and narrows his focus to the Abomination's back.

He hears the spider hiss again as it spits something, but he crouches low and creeps his way across the distance from his target. The demon turns to deal with the spider, so Zevran sheathes the Dweomer dagger and moves a little faster.

It never has a chance to notice him – Dog and the spider keep it too busy. They tag team wonderfully: the spider spits, or rakes along the demon's chest with one long claw, and then Dog lunges forward and knocks it down when it tries to attack the spider.

For an instant, he wishes he had a curved sword. But as it is, the demon's distraction makes it easy. He closes his eyes when it howls, savors the moment as the longsword sinks into the demon's knee. He pushes down and twists his wrist. It's not a proper hamstringing if you don't get both tendons, after all.

Blood slickens the hilt of his blade, pours down the demon's leg. He watches as it falls to one knee, no longer able to stand on the other. It reaches wrinkled, burnt-looking hands to its leg, but the bleeding won't stop.

Ah, the advantage of using a longsword instead of something more precise, like a stiletto. It's much harder to miss arteries with a swordblade.

Lightning flashes once more. It sends him reeling, leaves his head spinning and horrible colors flashing in his vision, but he just barely makes out the demon standing with a healed leg. Zevran forces himself to ignore the dizziness, the spots, the headache, and bears down on the demon.

Sens joins him. Fire blossoms into a red-orange wreath around his sword and dagger, but then vanishes as she slides to a stop. He stops as well, watches cold turn the very air into a glitter of frost. Ice sparkles as it traps the demon.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Dog come barreling toward them. He pulls Sens out of Dog's way, takes the opportunity to swipe at the demon with his off-hand. The dagger's edge rings strangely against the ice.

The ice begins to thaw.

Two things happen at the same time: Dog connects with the demon, and Wynne projects some sort of statue mockup of her fist. The fist strikes the demon in the face just as Dog's unburned shoulder slams into the demon's chest.

The demon topples backward. The leg that he crippled becomes a bloody shred of meat.

This time, it doesn't get up.

Zevran hefts the longsword. But it's Wynne who steps forward. She holds her hands out, expression grim and eyes glittering with something he recognizes all too well.

"Let me," she says. "Please."

Sens, her other companions, and kill-stealing, he sighs to himself as Wynne drives the sword into the demon's throat once, twice, again. She only stops when she's completely severed the neck.

* * *

The demon's body hasn't even cooled before something else goes weird. The air shimmers and a tired-looking mage appears out of nowhere. Zevran notes an expression of surprise on the mage's face.

But then the mage draws closer, and it's not surprise at all. His eyes look glassy, almost glazed over, and his slack jaw is the horrible absence of a man not in his own mind, rather than a startled man's gape.

Maybe he just noticed Wynne, who looks quite stunning with blood caked up to her elbows and spattered on her face. She's still holding his longsword; it complements her red robes better than he'd have thought. She's held up surprisingly well for a woman her age.

Yes, right. And maybe Zevran has gauntlets with Andraste's knucklebones sewn on.

"You defeated the demon. I never thought... I never expected you to free yourself, to free us both."

"It's done," Sens says. She sounds every bit as tired as the mage looks.

Wynne drops his longsword. "Niall."

Zevran misses the mage's response: he's too busy diving for his sword without sacrificing dignity by actually _looking_ like he's diving for it. In other circumstances, that would be a simple matter, but Dog complicates the process by wanting to lick the flat of the blade.

He attempts to slide the hilt of his sword from under Dog's massive paw. Dog lets out a low growl and moves it away from him.

He decides against arguing with an intelligent nine-stone mass of dog muscle with jaws that can remove a man's carotid _and_ jugular in one snap. Even if there's a strong possibility that licking demon blood isn't exactly a good idea. Fine. Let the dog lick the sword. Let the sword sit in the dirt.

It's not even like the dog, the sword, or the dirt are real. Although if he wakes and finds his actual longsword's edge as badly chipped as this one's – but is that even possible? If one dies in the Fade, does one's body die as well? More importantly, is he going to wake to a body still aching from the rack?

Enough thinking about that. The realities and non-realities of the Fade are confusing; best to leave them to mages and philosophers. He'll wake to whatever he wakes to.

He turns his attention back to the trio of mages. Wynne's expression has gone from shell-shocked to sorrowful. Even the lines around her eyes and mouth have deepened; she actually looks her age. Sens looks grim, but Sens always looks grim.

"For you it will have been an afternoon's nap," Niall is saying. "Your body won't have wasted away in the real world while your spirit lay in the hands of a demon."

An afternoon's nap. Yes, of course. Zevran feels very well-rested.

"Every minute I was here, the sloth demon was feeding off of me." Niall's voice takes on an edge when he says _feeding_. It's almost a bitter tone, and that makes Zevran realize that Niall speaks with only a shade more involvement than that Tranquil did. "He used my life to fuel the nightmares of this realm."

Wynne shakes her head. "Niall, there must be a way. You would be such a boon to the Circle; we can't afford to simply lose you to your own hopelessness."

She looks to Sens for help, but Sens says nothing. She only watches. Closely, actually: she's watching Niall the way she watched Jowan in the dungeon.

So Zevran watches too.

"It's all right, Wynne. I do not fear what may come. They say we return to the Maker. That isn't so terrible, is it?"

Even as Niall speaks, his face and voice take on more life. His eyes begin to clear. His jaw tenses again.

"Terrible?" Wynne lets out a sound that might have been a chuckle, if such obvious sadness hadn't fueled it. "No, not a terrible fate, but it's not the right one."

"Life isn't fair, Wynne," Niall says. "I was never meant to save the Circle, or... survive its troubles. I am dying. It is as simple as that."

"And am I meant to watch a mage I mentored throw his life away?" Wynne's voice turns sharp. "Have you even _attempted_ to waken, Niall?"

Niall's silence is answer enough.

"I thought as much." Wynne sighs. "You may be right, Niall, but –"

"He's not," Sens says. She speaks briskly, matter-of-factly, as if she's discussing some sort of academic question and not whether or not a fellow mage is actually dying. "Niall had a spine once. Perhaps the Sloth Demon might have told us what became of that man."

That statement makes little enough sense to Zevran, but Wynne smiles, and Niall wakes a little more.

"That's right," Niall says. "Sloth demons feed on... Have I been playing into his hands?"

"So they eat apathy? But did this demon not use his very life to fuel this place?"

Wynne shakes her head. "Both, after a fashion. All demons drain mortals of their lives, their very selves, but they do so in the process of devouring one emotion or another – and, naturally, they must first induce that emotion before they can drain it."

Zevran pieces this together. "So Sens means the Sloth demon was causing Niall's apathy and hopelessness, and was using that to... what, eat away at his body?"

"It eats everything you are," Niall says, softly. "More than just what you feel, more than just your memories. It eats at the very force that makes your heart beat."

"I thought lungs did that."

Niall either doesn't follow his logic, or has decided to ignore the lowly non-mage. He puts his head in his hands, mumbling something about playing into a demon's very hands. "Before I was taken to the Circle, my mother said I was meant for greatness, that I would be more than my ancestors could have ever dreamed. What would she say now, I wonder?"

"I think you know," Wynne says.

"Then it is time for us all to be on our way." Niall pauses. "If I don't join you, don't forget the Litany."

* * *

He's stiff when he wakes, so he stretches. He tries to move slowly, but the life returns to his limbs with near-excruciating pins and needles. He stretches more and forces himself to stand.

He can raise his arms over his head without the broad agony of dislocation. He can touch his toes, can crouch.

A dream. It was all a dream – no, it was all _just_ a dream.

Zevran takes a deep breath in. Then he draws his sword, inspects the edge. He sees a few nicks, but they're the normal product of battle.

Sens wakes up next. He watches her fingers tighten into a fist, then relax. After that, she curls herself into a ball.

"My Warden, if I might offer a piece of advice?"

Sens replies with a groan. The noise hits a sweet spot – he wants to hear her make it again, under different circumstances – and it takes an effort of will not to tease her about it.

"I'll take that as acceptance," he says instead. "Warden, you need to move. It'll get better if you do, see?"

Sens rolls over to look at him. Her expression doesn't change from the usual grim mask, but he doesn't need it to.

"Yes. That was intentional."

"Shouldn't even have to ask," Sens says, but she pushes herself to her feet regardless.

The straps of her studded armor swish and click again, but this time, there's no panicking Templar. Zevran takes a moment to appreciate the mostly unobstructed view of dusk-gold thighs, only a few shades lighter than the deep, golden brown of her arms and calves.

While Sens works the blood back into her limbs, Zevran turns and begins to pat Niall down for valuables. Mages travel with full pockets, apparently; he has to discard several scraps of paper that are neither a Litany nor related to that 'Adralla.'

That's a very nice sum of silver coins, though, and Zevran pockets them while deliberately not wondering where a mage might earn money. A few more coins, a scrap of cloth, and finally he pulls out a thick sheaf of vellum documents.

They're heavy, yellowing, and written in a blend of modern Tevinter's spider-script and ancient Tevinter's runes.

Zevran leafs through them, then displays them to Sens and the still-waking Wynne with a flourish.

"The Litany," Wynne confirms as she stands. Her movements are shaky.

Wynne only looks even more her age as she takes a step toward Niall, and coincidentally toward Zevran. He can see the beginnings of a blue-white glow surround her hand, catches the scent of green, but Sens intercepts her.

"Whether he lives or not, there's nothing more we can do for him," she says.

"There must be something more," the older mage replies, and Zevran hears echoes of _I will not lose the Circle to one man's stupidity_.

"A demon fed on him. What can you do for that?" There's a short pause, and then Sens adds with a touch of bitterness underneath her usual stoic tone, "Save use blood magic and hope you can replenish what the demon took?"

Wynne shakes her head, but turns away. "We both know that's not an option."

"Not least because neither of you knows any." He thinks about that, because he's not really so sure of Wynne, and finishes, brightly: "At least, I hope neither of you knows any. Now, let's away, yes? Before some other demon sees us and decides to trap us in an illusion of its own?"

He didn't expect the ploy to work, but it does: Wynne allows herself to be led away while explaining to him at length that the Fade trap wasn't an illusion, per se. Zevran listens with half an ear, allowing the philosophical angles to wash over him while trying to sift out the useful information.

They close the door behind them. Sens draws a white stub of chalk from her pack and holds it out to Wynne.

"And what do you expect me to do with this?"

"Protect him."

Wynne's eyes widen. After a moment, she takes the chalk, turns to the door and begins to draw on it. He watches, fascinated, as a pattern emerges: circles within circles within circles, sharpened by four spikes. Just looking at it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The silver-white glow all but screams _I'm a trap, don't touch me_.

But that only convinces him that there has to be a way around such a trap. Maybe if he very carefully smudged one of those spikes? Ah, well, there will be plenty of time to practice later, he's sure.

They leave the closed, warded door behind them. Zevran and Dog take point again, while Sens drifts to the rear. When he looks back, he sees Sens leafing through the Litany. Every now and again, she mumbles a word in Tevinter, but for the most part, she reads silently.

They pass another closed door. Dog stops, muscles tensing and hackles rising. He doesn't growl; instead, he merely peels one lip back to reveal his teeth.

Zevran takes that silence for a cue and waves to Sens and Wynne to stay back. He steps in close and presses an ear to the door.

He doesn't have to listen intently to hear the people inside. The argument start out quiet, a soft but insistent drone of words. He picks out the voices of two distinct people, a man and a woman. Just beneath them he hears an undertone that could be as few as two or as many as four others.

Then the argument picks up volume. The woman hisses, "He's gone mad! He's killing us as well as the others and this was all supposed to be bloodless!"

"We don't have any choice but to move the plan forward." The man sounds as bleakly hopeless as Niall had.

The woman's voice rises into a choked shout: "How can the Circle be independent if there _is_ no Circle?"

"Well, we can't simply kill him," a different man snaps. "Even if we managed it, the plan would fall apart."

The first man joins in again: "Unless you know how Loghain and Uldred sent messages?"

"All we need," a third man says in a tone that is either tiredness or exasperation, "is to wrest the Circle away from Irving. If he's not in control, then Loghain will know we've won. Uldred is expendable."

Zevran's heard enough. He grips the door handle and shifts his weight, eases the heavy wood away from the doorjam as quietly as he can. Dog slips in through the narrow opening and Zevran follows. He turns to control the way the door closes, to make sure it does so soundlessly, and then circles around his targets.

This is the problem with mages: there's no way to tell the greatest threat at a glance. With melee and ranged fighters he can prioritize, but any of these mages could be the most lethal of them all.

"Wait!" One of the men holds up a hand, peering around suspiciously. Zevran flattens himself against the far side of a bookcase and doesn't move. "Did you hear that?"

Another of the men confirms, in a distant tone, "We're not alone."

And that settles which one he's going to kill first. Zevran steps away from the bookcase, circles around behind the one with the slack expression, and watches in satisfaction when Dog rams into the suspicious one.

He sinks his dagger in the lower back of the half-dreamy one. Just as he's pulling the knife out and reaching for his longsword, the door shatters.

Wynne shakes crumbling gray dust from her hand and purses her lips.

There's a faint pause as the blood mages not busy disentangling themselves from a growling mountain of muscle take in the arrival of an old woman who can bust down heavy oak doors with magic-encircled fists. The pause lengthens when a bear lumbers through the gaping doorway.

Zevran takes the opportunity to finish the sword-draw and simultaneously stab his original target again. The man lets out a soft gasp and slumps forward. One of the other men catches him at the same time that Zevran moves away, whirling out with his sword arm to glance a distraction blow on the nearest.

The woman cottons onto her imminent demise and draws a knife, while the third and last man brings a red-smeared hand away from the cut on his leg. The second man digs his fingers into the bloody hole in the first's kidneys.

Oh. Maybe that was a bad idea.

That's all the time he has to spare for conscious thought. A red mist explodes from the dying maleficar and half the room catches fire. The scent of burning fur fills his nose, as Dog yelps, and he hears sizzling meat and then Sens's roar.

For an instant, he sees everything - which is nothing but the gobbets of blood still falling, the fire that engulfs Dog and Wynne, while Sens shoulders past the line of flame. Lightning flashes once, twice; thunder booms; his focus snaps and the world narrows to the throat of the nearest blood mage.

He puts a blade through it, then jerks away. Another blood mage creates a horrific red fog, even while Wynne makes soft gasps of pain before she falls silent. Zevran hears blue-white but tastes green. Dog's whimpers stop.

Ice hisses. Thunder crashes again, rolling off the stone to mask the crackle of electricity. Steam billows around them all.

And then, at last, it ends as quickly as it began.

"Please," the last living blood mage begs. "Please don't kill me."

Sens places her foot on the woman's wrist. "Tell my why I should spare your life."

"I know I have no right to ask for mercy, but I didn't mean for this death and destruction. We were just trying to free ourselves."

Sens looks away from the mage, pointedly turning her gaze to the dead blood mages who surround them, then jerks her head toward the hall. Her expression remains the same grim mask throughout. Despite that, her question is clear: _Do you think it's worth this?_

"To free yourselves," Wynne echoes. "How could you accomplish that with blood magic?"

"Uldred had plans. He told us that the Circle would support Loghain and Loghain would help us be free of the Chantry."

"Ah, Loghain again," Zevran sighs. The blood mage shoots him a confused look, while Sens merely turns to face him for a moment, expressionless as usual. He decides to let the mages handle mage business, with no commentary from lowly non-mages.

"You understand, don't you?" The blood mage looks to Sens, her expression even more pleading and desperate. "You remember what it was like. The Templars always watching, just waiting for any excuse to kill us all."

Sens's only reply is silence. It's Wynne who asks, "So you turned to forbidden magic, giving them a pretext to destroy the entire Circle?"

The woman on the ground twists to look at Wynne. "The magic was a means to an end. It gave us... it gave _me_ the power to fight for what I believed."

Sens looks away. Her face softens, but into absence rather than than tenderness. "Power."

"Fighting for what you believe is commendable, but the ends do not always justify the means."

"You don't really believe that, do you, Wynne?" The blood mage's tone is pitying, and for all that he dislikes Wynne's insistence on philosophizing, the maleficar's tone irritates him. "Did Andraste fight the Imperium with sternly-worded letters? She reshaped civilization and gave us the Chantry, but people died for it. And we thought we had to take the first step, to force a change, no matter the cost."

"So the end justifies the means." Sens words it neither as a question nor as a judgment. It's a place-holder, an invitation for the maleficar to say more.

"Do _not_," Wynne says, voice taut, "even begin to agree with that logic, Sens Surana. Nothing is worth what they've done to this place."

"Our dreams might have been. We had hoped..." The blood mage chuckles bitterly. "But now Uldred's gone mad, and we are scattered, doomed to die at the hands of those who seek to right our wrongs. Our hopes are ended, before they'd even begun."

Self-pity. He supposes he should have expected it; he heard plenty and more of it when those targets who had the chance begged for their lives.

Despite this woman's pale skin, the rounded ears, the red-gold hair, the scene echoes another woman's plea. But no. She did not speak of pity, of dying hopes and past pains; she merely denied guilt. Denied it honestly and earnestly – and it yielded her nothing.

Sens steps back just far enough to free the blood mage's wrist and then kneels. She removes the knife from the blood mage's grasp; the mage tenses like a frightened animal, despite the gentleness of Sens's movements.

"Before I decide," she says, quietly, "answer three questions."

"Please. I just want my life."

"If I let you live, what will you do?"

The mage says nothing for a moment. At length, she says, "I would like a chance to atone for what I've done. If you spare me, I could escape and seek penance at the Chantry."

"How would you leave this tower?"

"I'll find a way. Please... I swear I'll do something good with my life."

Not a very satisfactory answer. Not at all an answer that inspires confidence, even if 'something good' wasn't such a nebulous, abstract concept.

Sens apparently agrees with him, for she repeats the question in a flat tone.

"They wouldn't know that I'm a blood mage. I'd go downstairs and join the apprentices, and then in the confusion after everything was sorted... I'd slip out the doors when the guard was lax."

That has to be the worst plan he's heard since he told himself _Knock over a few carts, put some archers on those two hills, grab an expendable mage, and rush the Wardens yourself._ Then again, _his_ plan had served well enough for his true purposes, barring unexpectedly merciful bear-women.

This woman's plan is an out-and-out laughingstock. He snickers.

Sens's frown deepens, but she nods. She moves a little closer to the blood mage, brushes the back of her hand against the other mage's cheek. "Final question."

"Please," the blood mage says.

"Was Jowan involved in this?"

The blood mage trembles, looking sickened, and then shakes her head. "I don't know. He wasn't in my cell, and only Uldred knew all of us. I never even knew for certain that he _was_ a blood mage until..."

"I see," Sens says.

"So you'll let me go?"

"There are half a dozen dead neonates in the apprentice quarters. Seeking penance in the Chantry won't bring them back."

The blood mage's eyes widen in shock and she jerks away, begins to rise as if to run.

Sens is too fast for her. Perhaps her speed comes from a plan, or perhaps it comes from greater experience in direct combat. But she doesn't falter as she reaches out to grab the other woman by the hair.

The blood mage's knife rises once and again.

"My warden, forgive me if this advice is unwanted, but try to go from ear to ear in just one cut next time," he tells her when it's done. "More than that just makes a bigger mess."

Wynne turns to stare at him. She looks in shock, as if she can't quite grasp the flow of events that led to this. Or perhaps she can't grasp their reactions.

"I should hope there won't _be_ a next time," she says at last. "Sens, that she needed to die... I won't question your judgment, but in that fashion? With false hope?"

"I intended to spare her," Sens replies.

"I take it you changed your mind when she couldn't answer your question about Jowan." Wynne's voice is hard, the tone brittle.

Sens shakes her head exactly once. "She didn't know how she would escape. With a plan that frail, she'd have resorted to blood magic."

"How can you be so sure of that?"

"The law of the instrument."

Wynne opens her mouth to answer, but then she goes quiet and looks away from them. The way her lips curve when she frowns makes the lines around her eyes more prominent. Once again, she looks her age.

* * *

Zevran continues to share point with the dog as they make their way through the rest of the fourth floor. Every so often, he reaches down to scratch Dog behind the ears. He runs the pads of his fingers over the silvery scar tissue that remains from his burns.

"You and fire, no, _cucciolo_?"

Dog whines. Zevran pats him idly on the top of his head. But then Dog sits, stubbornly refusing to move. He cocks his head to look behind them, so Zevran turns.

Sens has stopped moving. She widens her stance, inclining her head. A gesture of pride, or steeling herself for something? She's certainly never seemed to change her posture to give orders before.

"Wynne."

Wynne raises an eyebrow. "Is there something you wished to discuss? Time is of the essence."

He can't help but notice that though her tone is pleasant, it's a cold sort of pleasant. Still upset about the blood mage, then.

"Take the Litany," Sens replies.

Wynne's eyebrow arches even higher. "I understand that the Litany and healing magic may seem related, but I assure you, they are not. The Litany may be recited by any competent mage."

"I know." Sens holds the Litany out anyway.

Wynne doesn't reach for it. "You do understand that healing requires almost all of a mage's concentration? I can attempt to heal along with reciting the Litany if you feel it's necessary, but I must warn you..."

"It's you or Zevran, and I doubt Zevran had nine years of training in elocution of ancient Tevinter."

"You are a mage, and a well-trained one at that. Why not you?"

Sens moves forward, toward him. She stops just a pace away, rests the palm of her hand on the top of Dog's head. He lets out a low whine in response. She scratches behind his ears and draws in a breath before she turns to look back at Wynne.

"We need someone who can recite the Litany if I can't."

"I see," Wynne says, tone startled.

Zevran chuckles. If Wynne were any more transparent, they could use her to fix some of the Tower's broken windows. He keeps the observation to himself, of course. He doesn't want to have to listen to some sort of moralizing lecture - perhaps a draft of the lecture she's surely been writing in her head since Sens changed her mind about sparing the blood mage's life? - and he doesn't want to have to deal with Sens giving him a flat non-expression that means _Stop that. Try to get along, will you?_

Sens pats Dog and then stalks back toward Wynne. She holds the vellum pages out again, and says again, "Take the Litany."

Wynne takes it.

They continue on, moving a little slower because Wynne has to walk and read at once, and Sens seems unwilling to simply leave her behind. He chances a few glances back and notes that Wynne seems to be concentrating intently on it. He lets Dog take point alone and slows so he can half-watch Wynne over his shoulder.

Her gaze speeds over a page, moving so quickly that it's a wonder her eyes don't cross. But once she hits the bottom, she goes over it again, a little slower, and when she starts a third read-through, she goes much slower, and this time, her lips move as she reads. She never quite says anything aloud.

Sens's process, what few glimpses of it he saw, didn't seem nearly so involved. She drifts further and further back, eventually walking beside Wynne. Thgey read over each other's shoulders and every now and then one mutters a word in Tevinter, which the other repeats a few times. As if they're correcting each other's pronunciation or something.

Zevran loses interest. It's odd, but it's not an exciting odd, like somebody trying to kill them all.

They're almost all the way at the very end of the fourth floor, have almost come full-circle around the central part of the Tower, when Dog and Wynne both stop moving. Dog cocks his head and then growls. Wynne, too, seems on edge, when he turns to look at her.

"Sens, do you...?"

Sens nods once. "It's buzzing in the air."

"You should be on your guard, Zevran. Powerful magic is at work ahead of us," Wynne says.

"You'll be safe enough in our company, Wynne. Of that I can assure you," he says, because snapping that he hasn't once dropped his guard while retaining consciousness will gain him nothing, and mentioning that he's a Crow will gain him even less than nothing.

He's lived long enough to know when he's being judged. And Wynne is judging him, his Warden, and probably even the damned dog, and has apparently found them wanting.

He turns away from the pair of mages, baring his teeth at the invisible weight of Wynne's judgment and whatever lies ahead.

* * *

He's more than a little surprised to discover that what lay ahead is a cage. If he were a philosophical man, he might find some sort of irony or message in the fact that it's a golden prison that cannot be removed - imprisoning a Templar.

Somebody was being vindictive, he thinks.

Sens moves past him and Dog. She presses her palms against the cage. Rings ripple out from her hands, and the rest of it flutters like a sheet being ruffled by the wind. But he hears a crackle of electricity and she staggers back.

"I've never seen anything like this before," Wynne says. "That poor boy."

The Templar finally seems to notice them. He looks up, and the shadows that had fallen over his face recede. And, just like everyone else who's ever lived in this damnable Tower, his expression changes when he catches sight of Sens.

Sens changes, too. Zevran watches her go ramdrod straight. Her hands clench into fists at her sides - and then they relax as she darts forward again.

Zevran watches lightning gather at her fingertips. It crackles in her right hand, while ice glitters in her left.

She strikes the barrier with the ice first. It ripples, and the ice spreads along it, spitting and popping, but then he hears something crack and the ice melts away.

The lightning doesn't help, either.

She sinks to one knee and looks back toward them. She's completely expressionless - even worse than usual. She looks hollowed out and it unnerves him more than the thunrder of her paws against his chest during his failed attempt to kill her.

"Wynne," she says.

Wynne steps forward and places her hands against the prison. But then she shakes her head. "I can see no way to bring it down."

Dog follows Wynne and sniffs at the cage. He whines and digs at the stone floor before turning away, his head drooping in a dejected posture.

The Templar never loses his look of abject horror. He groans from deep in his chest, his breath whistling through his gritted teeth. "Please," he says. "If there's anything human in you at all, just kill me. Stop this game. I'm not going to break like the others."

Zevran thinks: _You've already broken._

"Cullen, I'm not going to kill you."

The Templar shakes his head and closes his eyes. "No, no, no, no! Not this again. Anything but this again. Any of the other filthy lies..."

"Cullen!" Sens's voice goes harsh, sharp like a whipcrack, and Cullen jerks like a fly-stung horse. "Do you know who I am? It's Sens. The apprentice who worked in the creche with the neonates."

'Creche' and 'neonates' sounds like children, to him. It's hard to imagine cold, stoic Sens working with children. Defining herself by it. He raises an eyebrow, looks to Wynne.

Wynne only nods.

Cullen gasps for breath. He looks up and then quickly closes his eyes, turning his face away. "Yes, only too well. How far they must have delved into my thoughts, to tempt me with the one thing I always wanted but could never have."

This time, Wynne joins him in the startled lift of eyebrows. They look at each other.

"Cullen." Sens's tone has shifted from sharp to the warning she uses when she's trying to get Alistair to stop rambling and listen.

As if to back his mistress, Dog growls. It's a ferocious sound, the kind that would give Zevran pause to think about the widsom of hisa actions, should he hear it in the midsdt of dispatching a target.

But Cullen keeps talking: "To use my greatest shame against me. My ill-advised infatuation with _her_, a mage, of all things!"

A Templar, attracted to a mage? Attracted to _this_ mage? For all that the situation is amusing, it seems a bit too perfect. A Templar attracted to the only mage Warden, left imprisoned in a golden cage - an obvious metaphor for the Tower if he's ever seen one - he finds himself deeply suspicious.

There are messages, and then there are improbable coincidences. Regardless, there's no keeping in his chuckle.

"Someone was quite the little heart-breaker when they were an apprentice. My, my."

"And this time she arrives with companions to mock me," Cullen sighs. "I am so tired of these cruel jokes, these tricks, these-"

"- I'm neither illusory nor joking," the Warden says. She rises and retreats from the barrier. Her hands clench into fists once more.

"I close my eyes, but you are still here when I open them." Zevran almost thanks the boy for stating the obvious, but he continues, adding, "But that's always worked before. Are you... real?"

"I am. Tell me what happened."

Cullen laughs bleakly. "They trapped us here, caged us like animals, looked for ways to break us. There were too many. The others broke, but not me. No, not me, even with them reaching into my very mind with their awful hands. And now Uldred's locked the mages in the Harrowing Chamber, is turning them into monsters."

"And the neonates?"

"The children are long dead," he says, and laughs again, just as hopelessly as before, but with a mad edge. "Dead or worse. Oh, Sens, I wish I'd just done it myself. Made their ends quick. They're all gone, the only good ones."

"At least two survived. They're on the first floor, in the great hall."

But Cullen shakes his head. "No. The only survivors are the maleficarum strong enough to outmatch what they summoned."

"You're calling a pair of nine-year-olds maleficarum?" Wynne makes a pitying sound. "You poor boy. The things you've seen have harmed you, and you speak from that, not from reality."

Sens ignores it all. She sweeps her hand out in a "cutting" motion. "Does Irving live?"

"I saw the blood mages drag him up the stairs, but the sounds coming out from there... oh, Maker!"

"Then we've no time to waste. They are in grave danger, I am sure of it." Wynne starts toward the stairs.

Cullen's harsh, reeling, mad laugh stops her. "You can't save them. They're Becoming, or they've Become already. Would that I'd spared the children this. I thought we were too hard on the Circle, but I see now. Would I had spared the neonates this long ago."

Sens's tone hardens. "What exactly are you saying?"

"It's a pity they grow to become mages. Such a horrible, horrible pity. I should have given them peace long ago." He pauses, looks up at Sens, and says, "You'll have to kill everyone in that Chamber. No telling who's turned and who hasn't. The Tower has to be wiped clean."

Sens steps back again, retreating from the madman. The madman who has cracked completely, has shattered so wholly that he thinks he's sane. Zevran would pity him, if there were anything in that shell left to bother with.

Dog growls, low in his throat. But the growl turns into a harsh snarl. Saliva flecks along his fangs, drips to the stone floor. And Zevran has no doubt what Dog would do, if the mabari could only breach that golden barrier.

"Surely some of them can be saved," Sens says, softly. "We are not all so weak, Cullen."

"You haven't been up there. You haven't been under their influence. You have to end it, now, before it's too late."

"I would rather spare a maleficar than kill an innocent mage."

Wynne smiles. "Thank you. I knew you would make a rational decision."

"Rational? How is this rational? Do you understand the danger?"

"I know full well the dangers of magic," Wynne places particular emphasis on the words _full well_, "but killing innocents because they _might_ be maleficarum is not justice. I know you are angry-"

"You know nothing! I am thinking about the future of the Circle. Of Ferelden."

"You are thinking of what has been done to you. You speak from neither wisdom nor justice, but from pain."

"All this talk of innocence and justice," Zevran sighs. "Somebody's got tomatoes in his olive bowl. Don't side with crazy people: very simple."

"Mad, elf, you think I'm mad? What would you know of the _necessities_ of the Circle, of the righteous and vital duties of a Templar?"

"I know that I doubt they apply to nine-year-olds," he says. "And I know that Sens has made her decision. Sens is the one _not_ in the magical cage, in case you hadn't noticed."

Wynne shoots him a 'don't taunt the poor boy' look, which Zevran ignores. He turns to face Sens. She looks sober, a little sad, but the downard-curve of her lips is more grim than anything else. So difficult to read, she is, he thinks once more. It's really quite unfair.

"I assume we are done here, my Warden?"

"I have made my decision," she agrees. She turns away from Cullen in a soft sweep of leather and metal. She unslings her staff from its place on her shoulder and starts up the stairs to the Harrowing Chamber.

Dog races toward her, still snarling, and barrels up the stairs to go ahead of her. Zevran, too, follows closely. He and the dog will enter ahead of the mages.

* * *

The door swings open and then shut behind them, and Zevran begins to understand what Cullen meant when he spoke of sounds.

A mage whimpers. The sound comes from his chest, but his throat and mouth gurgle. Blood drips from his lips.

And above him stands a bald mage. Zevran isn't sure what strange magic the bald man is using, but the tormented man nods, and the bald one lets him fall to the floor.

The change begins immediately. For reasons he doesn't understand, the mage's body twists, and curls, and the mage cries out through clenched teeth and closed eyes. His back swells, his fingers gnarl into unnatural shapes, his face gains wrinkles.

Understanding hits and hurts like a knife to the kidney: this is the creation of an Abomination.

And then the bald mage turns to face them. His expression is slack, unfeeling, and sends a frisson of horror down Zevran's spine. This man is none of the three races, is not even _alive_ anymore.

"Ah... look what we have here," the mage purrs. "I remember you. Irving's star pupil. Uldred didn't think much of you then, and I certainly don't see your appeal now."

"I'm not here to appeal to anyone," Sens says, flatly. "I'm here to stop you."

Uldred's face twitches into irritation for an instant, but then he soothes himself. "Stop me? But whatever for? I'm freeing these people, too long shackled by the Circle. I'm giving them what they truly wanted all along."

"I doubt anyone wants that," Sens replies, gesturing at the nascent Abomination.

"Oh, but they do. Even Irving. And I do have Irving on my side, don't I, First Enchanter?"

An aged-looking mage gasps to speak; every breath wheezss in his chest. "Stop him. He... is building an army. He will," the First Enchanter sucks in a breath and whistles with the effort, "destroy the Templars and-"

Irving's mouth snaps shut so suddently that his teeth click. And Uldred looks irritated. "That's enough out of you, Irving. You'll serve me, eventually."

A bead of sweat rolls down Irving's forehead, but his mouth opens, and he manages to breathe, "Never."

His mouth shuts again.

Zevran almost pities him.

"You must have seen, Mage Surana. You are but the larval form of something greater. The Chantry vilifies us, calls us abominations, when we have truly reached our full potential!"

"Potential?" Wynne scoffs. "This is not what mages want. Sens, we must kill him now, before he spews even more poison."

Uldred heaves a sigh. "That it must come to this... ah, well. Your struggles will make my victory all the sweeter."

The Abomination takes a step back. It twists and shrivels, too, but at the same time, it grows. What's left, at the end, is an ugly mass of muscle.

Lightning crackles, fire roars, and Zevran adds 'magical power' to his list of the Abomination's weapons.

"Pride," Sens murmurs, before she encases the Abomination in ice.

Zevran circles around behind Uldred, unsheathing his longsword even as he moves. Most of Uldred's attention focuses on Wynne and Sens, but then Dog lunges forward. Nine stone of furious mabari slam into the Abomination and send it stumbling back.

Sens casts a lightning spell that catches not only Uldred but also Dog and Zevran in its grasp. It's strange, though; despite the blue-white-violet lines that jolt up and down his hands and arms, he feels no pain, and they do him no damage.

Uldred, though, howls. He casts a spell of fire that forces Sens back. The elf mage stumbles and catches herself against a stone wall.

Wynne casts that spell that makes the earth shake again.

Zevran staggers, trying to keep his balance. He lunges forward, manages to keep his leading and trailing feet straight despite the quaking floor, and sinks his longsword into Uldred's back.

Uldred's response is a blur. He thinks _no, move, move, move_ and even as he's dodging back something slams into his chest. He feels the impact in his ribs, feels it when his back strikes stone, when his head strikes stone.

When he's not bleeding from the ears, when he he can move again, he rises, slowly, to his feet. Every muscle hurts.

Zevran spits blood.

Both Wynne and Sens stand before Uldred's captive mages. The floor beneath them glows gold. Both women speak in Tevinter - but it is not quite speaking, no. Their voices slide up and down scales, every word spoken clear like a rung bell. Are they singing? Are they chanting?

The golden glow hisses and finally cracks.

Wynne wipes her brow.

Sens takes in a deep breath, lets it out, takes in another. She drops her staff, raises her hands in the air. Zevran watches, fascinated, as she begins to gesture, mumbling in ancient Tevinter even as she watches the ceiling.

Wynne strikes Uldred with a stone copy of her fist. It draws his attention away from the casting mage. Zevran draws his daggers, both the one on his back and his hidden one, and races toward Uldred.

The elder mage raises her staff. The staff glows blue, but Zevran hears and tastes green. He can feel the giant bruise from where Uldred kicked him beginning to ease.

And then Sens finishes her incantation. Wind shrieks loud enough to make him long to cover his ears. He sees one of the mages and a smaller abomination both clap their hands to their haads, trying to drown out the sound. Harsh, bitter fog gathers, and soon cold and ice and snow pelt down on them all.

To avoid the consequences of her spell, Sens puts her back to the far wall and leaves her woman-shape behind.

Zevran goes after Uldred from an angle, this time. Dog and Sens both slam into him from the front, drawing his attention, and the Crow sinks first one blade, then another into Uldred's leg.

Uldred howls.

But rather than realize that he's been struck from behind, he sweeps Dog away. The mabari staggers and Zevran hears claws click against the stone as the poor animal tries desperately to maintain balance.

So Uldred hits him again.

Sens roars in fury when Dog's back hits the wall.

Dog lets out a whimper, and her roar turns into a screech that makes Zevran want to cover his ears. He doesn't spare the time for it; instead he yanks his blades out of Uldred's leg and stabs again. Uldred will kick him again he's sure, but he can take it -

Sens goes flying. He watches the bear crash into another wall and buries his daggers up to the hilt in putrid Abomination flesh.

Uldred finally realizes what's been stabbing him.

Golden weight crushes him. Zevran tastes lemons and sunlight and his own blood. He can't move to protect himself as Uldred lifts him in one hand.

More gold magic encircles the living mages. Zevran watches as Wynne turns away from him, away from the dog, away from Sens who is still conscious and is trying to stand - Wynne turns away from them all to help the mages.

Zevran boils inside.

He hears bone make an awful crack. Sens lets out a strangled whine and falls back to the ground. She cannot stand, despite her attempt.

The golden glow surrounding the mages dissipates. Zevran begins to feel the Abomination's fingers around his ribs. He takes in a light breath, tastes green again.

His grip on one of his daggers is loose. Uldred squeezes him and Zevran loses track of which arm is which; he's in too much pain to tell. He tightens one hand on the hilt of a dagger and raises it.

Uldred's fist tightens around him. Zevran hears a rib crack and tastes his own blood again. His eyes nearly roll up in his head.

It hurts, ah, Maker, it hurts. But he's used to hurting. He's hurt so much more than this.

Uldred's mouth is smiling. That burns at him. To die in the hand of something that's neither man nor demon, and have it smile at him in his final moments.

Zevran boils inside again, but the Abomination's hand tightens and he cannot breathe, cannot think, cannot burn. He has no room for anything but the un-breathing red mist in front of his eyes.

If this is dying, it's not nearly as terrible as it could be.

It's not nearly as terrible as it could be, he thinks - until he hears steel clatter against the stone floor. He cannot feel his hands; he has to look to see that he has dropped one of his daggers.

Oh, Maker.

It's the left-hand dagger, the plain one. He can survive this, he tells himself. Then he wonders if surviving is worth it - except he doesn't want to die, even if it seems inevitable.

Uldred laughs at him. And that's the final straw: Zevran finds the room to boil. He has to look at his right hand but he sees the Dweomer dagger glinting within it.

It takes such effort to lift his right arm. His lungs burn, his arm sends jolts of pain down his spine and everywhere through him. But what's a little pain, when his alternative is to die?

Uldred's expression begins to change just as Zevran forces his hand forward. He manages to sink the dagger into Uldred's eye, the softest part of the mage's face.

He feels the metal bite in and keeps pushing, despite the pain, despite everything. Shockwaves travel up his arm, but he can see from the jet of blood, can hear from the soft squishing noises, that he's touched the brain.

Then he falls, because Uldred falls, and his bruised, cracked ribs hit the floor. He'll be fine, he thinks, distantly.

What is pain to a Crow?


	4. dance fair paris ashes now

Zevran watches Wynne touch Sens with glowing hands, then shake her head and start toward him. He opens his mouth to snap at her when she kneels at his side, but he can't talk around the taste of green.

Her mouth tightens into a deep frown.

When he can speak, he demands: "Why are you healing me first? Paralysis is worse than mere cracked ribs."

Wynne says nothing. She simply keeps the healing magic coming, until he's full of blue and white and green, until he tastes her magic under his tongue and in his eyes. Slowly, gradually, it becomes easier to breathe.

"Can you stand?"

He crawls to his feet. He almost has to steady himself against the stone wall, but he locks his knees just in time.

"Then help me with her, please. I'll need a pair of steady hands stabilizing her spine."

It's amazing, how Wynne has turned what she worded as a request into an order. But he only grimaces once and follows.

Sens is no longer a bear, he realizes. She's shrunk back into her elven shape, a tiny twisted body. It seems strange, to see how small she is, how fragile she is. Wrong, even.

"Carefully, now," Wynne reminds him needlessly. She pulls the stopper on a bottle of lyrium and drains it in one swig. No dainty sipping for Wynne, not when a Warden's future mobility is on the line.

He places his hands where she instructs. And Wynne pours healing energy into Sens's barely-conscious body. She pours so much of it he can feel it thrum down his own spine, can taste it.

Sens sighs. Zevran leaves Wynne to continue the rehabilitation. Instead he grabs a simple first-aid kit from Wynne's bag and circles around the room, seeing to the surviving mages.

It's then that he notices a few tiny bodies. Not many, not more than a handful. But enough.

Zevran contemplates how many children could have resisted what he saw Uldred put that first mage through. He doesn't like the number he comes up with.

How many of the Abominations they killed to get here were children? He decides not to consider that too closely, takes refuge in a quick reminder that everyone dies eventually. Some sooner than others and at his hand, is all.

"Maker," Irving sighs through his teeth while Zevran patches him up. "I'm too old for this."

Wynne looks up from her work with Sens. "Irving! Are you-"

"-First Enchanter," Sens cuts in, smoothly, despite the fact that she is currently re-learning to sit up. "Are you all right?"

"I've..." Irving grunts when Zevran dabs an elfroot poultice against a wound on his jaw. "...been better. But I am thankful to be alive. I suppose that is your doing, isn't it, Wynne?"

"I wasn't alone. I had help."

Irving's gaze swivels to Sens, then turns to Zevran. "So I see. The Circle owes both of you a debt we will never be able to repay. Particularly you, stranger, who had no cause I can name to help us."

"I am Zevran," he replies. "And the Warden's goals are my goals."

At that, Irving raises a gray brow. "So you came here seeking aid against the Blight, Sens?"

Sens nods. "Greagoir will accept only your word that the Tower has been brought to order."

"And thus will only free the mages to help you when I give him my word, yes?" Irving gives her the ghost of a smile. "Come, then. We shall let them know that the Tower is once again ours."

"Give me a moment to speak to my companion," Sens murmurs. She waves Wynne away and stands creakily, then moves toward Zevran.

Zevran decides to meet her halfway. His Warden shan't be protecting him from Crows anytime soon if she throws out her back or something. She leans in close to him, a little closer than is necessary, and he quashes the sudden urge to support her.

"Irving knows more about how this started than Wynne does," she says, softly. "But he won't simply tell us. Too much rests on him having no idea."

Zevran doesn't bother to hide the grin that curls along his mouth. It's all teeth, he's sure. "And you wish me to find out, yes?"

She says nothing, but he nods once, lets his smile retreat from predatory to merely confident. "Leave it to me, my Warden. You will have your answers by the time we leave this Tower."

"Thank you," she says.

He wonders just how much she'll be thanking him when she realizes how many of her 'neonates' were likely abominations, and just how many abominations they mowed through.

Regardless, Zevran moves toward Irving.

At the sight of him, Irving nods. "Discussion concluded? Ah, good, I'll need you to guide me down the stairs..."

At that, Sens drops to all fours. Zevran feels his gaze snap to take her in. The leathers sway for a bare instant before her body begins to elongate. Fur sprouts along her face as her nose shapes itself anew.

Within moments, there is no sign of the elven woman who requested more information, of the elven woman who accepted his oath of loyalty in exchange for his life. She lopes forward and noses Irving.

Irving chuckles and pats her head. "Oh, Sens. I cannot regret having you as a student, but the Templars who brought you to us made a grave mistake. You should never have left your forests, nevermind how many trees we've locked away in our library."

Sens makes no attempt to reply one way or another. She simply adjusts her position, the better to support Irving.

The First Enchanter leans heavily against her. He gasps at their first step away from the wall, and then shakes his head. "I've four floors of this to look forward to. Curse whoever insisted the Circle be housed in a tower."

Sens makes a startled barking noise, like a 'gwark!' and that catches Zevran's and Wynne's attention. Wynne shakes her head and returns her attention to Dog. It doesn't take long for her to restore Dog to some semblance of health.

Dog bounces up to his master immediately, barking exictedly. The bear merely watches him with a flat expression, so Dog bounces up to Zevran and barks even more. Zevran regards him, wondering just what the mabari's heard or smelled to make him bark his damn fool head off like this, but he reaches down and pets Dog anyway.

He's still mulling over Sens's strange bear bark as he curls his fingers against Dog's scar tissue.

* * *

Two floors down, Zevran takes advantage of the other mages's focus on Sens, Wynne and Irving to slip into Irving's office. He rummages around the man's desk, picking up fragments of notes but nothing that adds to anything significant.

Nothing on his desk, except a painted box he recalls a few of his mercenaries mentioning in hushed conversations and some books about blood magic. Zevran cocks his head, suspicious - particularly when he finds an ornate key in one of those books. But books aren't evidence of much, so he continues to prowl the room.

He untucks his lock picks from his right gauntlet at the sight of a chest tucked into a corner, but the ornate scrollwork on the lock looks like the key he's just picked up. He tries the key and startles himself when it actually works.

The first thing he lifts out is a strange black book, embossed with a dead tree on the front cover. He opens it, flips through a few pages, and feels his brow knit. This writing is neither Tevinter nor any other language he recognizes. Fascinating. The grimoire goes into his bag; with all the blood mages about, suspicion will likely fall on them before on Sens and her companions.

Next he pulls out a few journals. They're all clearly Irving's. He leafs through, then neatly tears out a few pages with the aid of a dagger. He inspects his handiwork and then nods. There's no sign those pages ever existed.

With any luck, Irving will never recall that he even made those entries.

He takes the time to finish the blood mages's jobs of ransacking the office, and then rejoins the group. Wynne has kept Irving busy with a lively debate about just where Uldred got his idea. He catches the tail end of it when he closes in on the mages.

Wynne and Irving quickly begin to bicker about the odds of Niall's survival.

"We'll defuse the Glyph," Irving assures her. "And make sure. I'm sure, with more of us about... if he lives, even barely, we'll be able to aid him."

Wynne bows her head. "Thank you, First Enchanter."

She shoots Zevran a look, imperious and haughty, and Zevran realises that no-one has batted an eye at his sudden reappearance. He grits his teeth. Hard to believe the judgmental mage has been covering for him, but she has.

She, too, must want to know how such a thing could happen. It's the only explanation he can come up with that makes any sense.

Her gaze flicks away from him in a beautiful display of subterfuge. It's hard to believe she could even know how to engage in subterfuge, but she looks away quickly enough that nobody else looks over to him. Zevran follows them silently, saying nothing, not even allowing his movements to make a sound.

They never notice that he's there.

They never notice that he wasn't there.

Unfortunately, after that they enter the Great Hall. A hall full of twitchy, stressed, possibly even terrified Templars. Zevran would lay odds that no few of them are strung out on lyrium, for lack of anything else to do in the waiting.

Plate gauntlets creak around the grips of maces. Men with blades already drawn bristle, put their backs to the walls and corners.

Perhaps he should have cautioned against this, Zevran thinks. But Irving stands hale and tall, and takes inching steps away from Sens, who sits on her hind legs with a _whump_.

Greagoir's face turns away from the thirty-stone bear and toward Irving. For a man so clearly haggard and worn, he does a good impression of overjoyed. "Irving? Maker's breath, I did not expect to see you alive."

Irving takes a step back toward her, fists his hands in Sens's fur. She shakes slightly, as if to itch his hands along her back, but otherwise bears it with good will. "It is over, Greagoir. Uldred," and here Irving sighs, "is dead."

Greagoir nods. "Then we have won back the tower. I will accept Irving's assurance that all is well."

That's when another Templar strides forward, into the hall. He carries his helm under his elbow and has slung his broadsword over one shoulder. Now that he's no longer on his knees, no longer alone, Zevran realizes that Cullen is actually one of the shorter Templars.

He's just barely tall enough for the sword he carries.

"It's not over!" Cullen insists.

Greagoir looks to him and raises an eyebrow. Irving coughs, then chuckles. "You must have been on edge, but we may now rest easy, child. The Tower is safe."

"How can you say that? No, Uldred tortured these mages, hoping to break their wills and turn them into abominations. We don't know how many of them have turned!"

Zevran watches Greagoir's brows hook down. "Irving says the Tower is back under our control. I, for one, believe him."

"Of course he'll say that! He might be a blood mage! Don't you know what they did? I won't let this happen again!"

That makes Zevran snort. 'Of course he'll say that! He's one of them!' Ah, if that isn't a classic, he isn't sure what is.

It certainly earns Cullen no favors with Greagoir. Greagoir's eyebrows hook even more, and he opens his mouth wide, practically shouting, "I am the knight-commander here, not you."

At that, Cullen subsides.

Greagoir looks to Sens. He does a double-take, as if truly realizing for the first time that Irving is leaning on a bear. This almost sends Zevran into peals of laughter. Nobody ever knows how to handle the bear.

As if to make things easier on him, Sens returns to her woman-shape. Wynne catches Irving before he can wobble, and Sens gently re-positions herself so she can support him once she's fully two-legged again.

Greagoir's eyebrows unhook, but lift until it's a wonder he doesn't lose them in his hair. "I know I promised you aid, but with the Circle restored, my duty is to watch the mages. They are free to help you, however. Speak to them."

Sens nods once.

"For now, I will have to oversee a sweep of the tower. There may be some survivors and we should do our best to tend to them. Please, excuse me. And Irving... it is good to have you back."

Irving chuckles again. It's a dry, rasping sound, and Zevran finds himself wondering if that's his natural voice, or if it's his shock and exhaustion. "Ah, I'm sure we'll be at each other's throats again in no time."

Greagoir gives him just the hint of a smile before striding away.

"Survivors," Sens murmurs, watching him leave. But then her gaze returns to Irving, clear and piercing. "First Enchanter, I have a treaty obl—"

And Irving chuckles again. "That is not necessary, Sens. The Circle will fulfil its obligation."

Sens is silent for a beat, then she gives Irving a curt nod. "There is one other matter."

That startles Irving into ruefully shaking his head. "Of course there is. Nothing was ever simple with you. Jowan either, I suppose. But those are thoughts for another time."

Sens's face shutters closed, even as she stiffens. She tries to hide it by relaxing, probably as soon as she realizes she's gone still, but Zevran catches it nonetheless. And if _he_ can see it, despite having known her a little over a month, he's sure Irving sees it.

But if does, he gives no sign. Perhaps the recent events in the Tower, not to mention his injuries, distract him. Perhaps he's simply unwilling to futher discuss a blood mage with so many armed and anxious Templars about.

Sens covers her reaction to the mention of Jowan a little better when she makes the request that brought them here. She states it baldly, driving the words in without noticeable emotion; just like nearly everything else, it's a mere statement of fact. "The Arl of Redcliffe's son has been possessed."

Irving's eyebrows rise.

"A mage who'd only just started showing signs," she says, stitching facts together. Zevran smooths away the smirk her lie of omission brings to his face. "When his father grew ill, he was approached in the Fade."

"And how do you know all this?"

Sens makes a face that Zevran hesitates to call a smile. It's all teeth and no humor. In fact, it reminds him of a creature he once saw, a 'monkey' tied to the wrist of a mercenary from Par Vollen. Some poor fool had tried to withdraw an offered coin from its grasp; it had bared its teeth in exactly Sens's current fashion before bloodying the the man's face with its sharp little claws.

"Many impertinent questions."

Irving nods as if asking impertinent questions is something Sens frequently does. Given the bluntness with which she's handled most of the people around her, Zevran rather suspects it is.

"You would need mages and lyrium to separate the boy from the demon where they join in the Fade... Yes. We should leave immediately." He pauses. There's a canny gleam in his eye. "And while we're on the way, you can tell me what you know of the Arl's illness."

* * *

Zevran looks at the sky when they leave, listens to the grass and the lake. Carroll and another Templar — Bran, he believes he hears Greagoir call him — row them across. It turns out the Templars keep a boat as well, so he, Dog, and Sens sit in a boat with Bran, while Wynne, Irving, and two other mages ride with Carroll.

He notes Caroll secreting away a pair of small vials into his gauntlets once they're all ashore. He files that information away, should he ever need to bribe or blackmail the Templar - which, considering Sens and considering his luck, seems likely.

It's very nearly the only thing of note during the day-long walk back to Redcliffe Castle. Irving and Sens discuss - his volume hushed and her tone blank — Eamon's condition, but the conversation soon switches to Tevinter. Zevran's ears practically perk: finally, a chance to begin to make sense of the Warden.

Irving speaks with the highly-trained academic accent that makes all the words sound like nasal droning. Sens is more natural, but the words seem to simply flow out of her, too quickly for him to follow by finding words shared between Antivan and Tevinter.

She seems more animated speaking this language. Is she more comfortable in it? More comfortable with Irving?

Wynne adds something, slowly and beautifully eununciated, and Zevran manages to pick out the words "forest" and "return."

Sens stares hard at Wynne. Her face and voice shutter away all emotion from her reply in rapid syllables of Tevinter.

And pieces start falling into place. He puts together that she speaks Elvish, that Irving regrets her being "taken" from a forest, that Wynne thinks she'll go back. And when he has a shape of an understanding from those facts, the stoicism and focus on duty begin to make sense.

The only piece that doesn't fit is the lightning-fast conversational Tevinter.

He mulls over that while they walk. Irving and Sens abandon their conversation so Wynne can cast minor healing spells on him whenever they stop to allow the mages rest. They stop far more often than he'd like — but they've spent how many years stuck in that Tower? Sens's endurance seems the exception that proves the rule, and he suspects that's hard-won.

The keep of Redcliffe Castle appears a few hours before sunset. Sens slows her pace; Zevran drifts toward her.

"Morrigan," she explains too quietly for the exhausted mages to hear.

It takes him a moment to find any significance, simply because of the absence of preamble. But Morrigan was never in the Circle, was she? Alistair certainly seems to think not, though Morrigan herself has never said anything definitive on the matter.

"Do you wish her warned to stay out of sight? I could move on ahead."

Sens considers this. Actual expressions flit across her face for several moments, each one gone sooner than the last.

But then she shakes her head. "No. She knows to hide it."

Sens picks up her pace after that, causing one of the mages to groan. Zevran falls back to the rear, the better to visually encourage stragglers to hurry. It's amazing what a pair of blades can do, even sheathed.

* * *

The day's shadows have just begun to lengthen into late evening when they finally pass under Redcliffe Castle's porticullis. Zevran looks around to take the measure of the courtyard.

But nothing seems any more wrong than it did when they left.

Zevran and Dog take point nonetheless as they all mount the stairs. The heavy oak doors swing open almost as easily as his hand finds his hidden dagger.

They find no new corpses, no new bloodstains. He watches a little tension drain from the line of Sens's shoulders.

Leliana is the first to greet them. If ducking from around a corner, arrow nocked and bowstring drawn back counts as a greeting.

She eases her hold on the string slowly before she lowers the bow. The sign of a professional: none of the too-quick, sloppy movements he's seen from too many hired archers to count.

"Sens! Thank the Maker that you're safe," Leliana says as she sinks the arrow back into her quiver. "You should make a bit more noise, Zevran; I'd hate to shoot the man guarding our other Warden and the mages."

Before Zevran can make a comment on how very expendable and unloved he suddenly feels and how sad it makes him, she brightens and adds, "Oh, at last we can save that poor boy! Alistair will be so happy. We should begin right away, don't you think?"

Perhaps he underestimates the mages. Perhaps he's just a deeply cynical man. Regardless, Zevran doubts they'll be up the task just yet.

Irving proves him wrong by stepping forward. The old mage's solemn tone gives no sign of the exhaustion he'd expected. "Yes. The sooner the ritual is begun, the better for us all."

Leliana's expression turns grave to match his. "You are most certainly right." To Sens, she says, "We've had no sign of Connor since you left."

"None?" Sens moves forward, to and past Leliana. She slings her staff off her shoulder as she goes.

Zevran draws his second dagger.

"Not even his corpse armies. And Alistair has been staring at the door to the Arl's quarters almost since you left."

Sens tenses. Her grip on the staff tightens, and then she relaxes. "His negation?"

"He has yet to say just what the matter is. Perhaps it's his Templar training, but I cannot say for certain."

Two of the mages shuffle awkardly, as if they're simultaneously trying to follow Irving's lead _and_ back away from the mere mention of a Templar. Zevran widens his stance to block the exit and smiles at the mage who looks his way.

Sens swipes her hand down and away from her body. "Sten and Morrigan?"

"Sten is standing watch on one of the body larders, in case they begin to rise." Leliana's tone has turned brisk, as if dragging corpses into closets is normal. "Morrigan was brewing elfroot draughts and making poultices, the last I saw of her."

"Good." Sens pauses. She adjusts her grip on her staff needlessly for a moment before adding, "I was wrong."

"I'm not the one who needs to hear that," Leliana replies. Despite the correction, there's no note of reproof in her voice, and her tone turns gentle when she adds, "You know we must sometimes make our decisions for the many, rather than the few. I'm glad it is not necessary, but I can see how easily it might have been."

Dog whines. Zevran reaches out, but the mabari ignores him and butts his head against Sens's hand. She scratches him without looking away from Leliana.

Leliana leads them through blood-spattered hallways. He catches the faint sound of murmuring from the chapel. A woman's voice — Isolde's, perhaps?

Ser Perth and the other knights line the Great Hall. Ser Perth gives Sens a startled but relieved look. He opens his mouth to say something, but stops when she sweeps past him without bothering to akcnowledge his presence.

The relative sanity of the courtyard and Great Hall make the horror that is the staircase and upper floor seem grotesque. Broken bodies litter a floor rancid and sticky with congealed blood. Flies buzz in thick knots, and the stench — almost as bad as the Circle Tower — is nearly enough to knock him down.

And Alistair has been up here since shortly after they left? The boy's either very dedicated or a masochist.

Or, he realizes when Teagan and Alistair come into sight, downright obsessive. Teagan has hung a longsword from a baldric; that seems to be his first concession to the imminent danger.

Alistair stands next to his uncle with his shoulders taut. His fists curl and uncurl, sometimes so forcefully that his gauntlets creak. Every time he flexes his fist, a muscle in his neck jumps.

No wonder Leliana said he was staring. This isn't standing watch. He's aiming himself at the Arl's quarters and whatever might come from them.

"Alistair?"

He doesn't even look up at the sound of Leliana's voice. His eyes flick briefly toward them, but then he resumes focus on the door.

It's Dog and Sens who grab his attention: Dog noses Alistair's hip and lets out an irritated-sounding whuff. When Alistair half jumps, Sens says, "We're back."

He turns fully toward them. Relief eases the tight line of his shoulders, the way he clenches his jaw.

"Sens! You've... you've brought them! I half thought..."

"So she has. Rest, lad, " Irving says. His tone speaks of pity, or perhaps something a bit softer than that. Sorrow? Sympathy? Zervran can't quite identify it. "We'll begin the ritual as soon as we've decided who will enter the Fade."

Sens looks away from Alistair. She watches the doorway for a silent moment, but then she moves back toward the rest of them. "I'll go."

That settles it. The afternoon and evening race away from there; events seem to flow by so quickly he can't reach for them, much less follow them.

Sens and the other mages discuss exactly what they'll need. From what he can glean amidst the jargon, Sens wants to perform the ritual immediately. Irving looks around them, clearly dissatisfied with the available space, and overrules her. Zevran almost wants to ask how it could be so difficult to work with a little blood around, but he's actually glad enough to follow them back down the stairs.

Sens, Irving, and Wynne bicker all the way down the stairs. The Great Hall settles their argument somehow, perhaps simply by being at the bottom of the stairs and not stinking of corpses.

The mages waste no time lighting candles and pouring lyrium, much to thge alarm of Ser Perth and his knights. Sens watches them a moment, then pulls Alistair and Leliana aside. He almost joins them, but the pinched look on Leliana's face makes him keep his distance. He overhears just enough to recognize a more full report of what happened while they were away, but he's satisfied with the facts as they stand.

The mages and the increasingly twitchy knights bear far more watching than the past.

When they begin a chant that makes the hair on the back of Zevran's neck stand up, Ser Perth sidles up to him.

"Is it... safe, you think, to be in here?"

He stares at the knight for a moment. That's a rather astounding lack of perspective regarding relative dangers from a man-at-arms who spent a night fighting off the walking dead.

Perth shifts his weight. "Ah, yes. I susppose if it were dangerous to be in the same room, they'd have sent us all away."

The thought doesn't seem to calm him.

"If you're disappointed, I'm sure there's always the possibility that another could be possessed."

"Dear Maker, no!" Perth's gasp draws Sens's gaze, but she returns to her discussion with Alistair and Leliana. "I just - I mean, it's magic. How can you be so calm?"

"We've both seen much worse than a few people singing." Zevran considers this. "I admit the glow isn't very becoming, but week-old corpses are worse."

He watches that thought trickle into the knight's brain. The knight nods, but the fingers of one hand rise reflexively to a Chantry amulet. He suspects it's one of the amulets Sens convinced the Revered Mother to offer the knights, over Leliana's protests.

"Regardless, I rather doubt we're needed." And with that, Perth strides from the room. His knights follow him.

Zevran watches them go, wondering if moving that quickly and jerkily in plate mail might cause it to pinch, and whether Alistair could answer that question without turning five new shades of red and passing out.

Morrigan enters the Great Hall in their midst. Her pace is calm, sedate, as if she's not an illegal mage about to come face-to-face with a party from the Circle.

She joins Sens, Alistair, and Leliana in their conversation. He can't quite repress his smirk when Alistair makes a disgusted noise and pulls away. Leliana follows after a moment, looking little happier.

Two of the mages fall silent, leaving only Irving's baritone and a nameless mage's soprano as a duet. Perhaps it's wrong to think of spell casting as singing, but the two voices weave Ancient Tevinter into an intricate melody in unsettling dissonance.

Then Irving goes quiet, leaving the soprano to a sustained note. She chants one more incomprehensible line and then she, too, ceases. The staffs never stop glowing.

Sens steps toward them.

Alistair reaches out to grab her arm. When she looks back at him, he tells her, "Before you go... I just want to say I'm glad you chose this route. It's... it's the best of the options, even if it didn't always look it."

There's raw, genuine gratitude in his voice, and his face is open, earnest. This is not the effusive, insincere thanks offered to them by rote. Sens stares at him a moment, as if she has no idea how to form a reply.

She most likely doesn't. Zevran knows what he would do, but Sens isn't one to laugh things away.

Awkward silence stretches between them, until at last Sens lays her hand on top of his. She stays like that, half-turned toward him with her smaller hand on top of his, for just a few moments. Long enough for it to be a message, but not over-long.

And then she lets go. She traces a cautious path past the candles, toward the lyrium. Morrigan draws in a hissing breath when she reaches out - and then lyrium glows silver white on dark skin. Zevran has to look away; he hears Dog whine.

He looks back and doesn't bother to bite back a curse. She's falling, curling in on herself as she sinks. He's fast, but he wasn't prepared for it; the pull of the earth is faster.

Alistair reaches her in time, manages to catch her just before her torso hits the ground. The other Warden swings her up and into his arms as easily as if she were a child.

Once he has her, the Templar stands there a moment. He shifts his hold on her, practically fidgeting. Zevran doesn't bother to hide his smirk at the sight of that. There's the dim possibility that Alistair isn't sure how to carry someone wearing less protective gear than his splintmail. There's the very great possibility that this is the first time Alistair has ever had a woman in his arms. That's the explanation he would bet on, were anybody laying odds.

But after the initial awkwardness, Alistair settles into a position. The stance looks remarkably like he's cradling a child. The sight only emphasizes the differences in their sizes, and that only serves to make her look fragile. Stranger even that that, her face has slackened from its usual mask. She looks young now that she's not freezing her face into grim stoicism.

This frail-looking woman turned into a bear and nearly broke his ribs, defeating him soundly, while Alistair and Leliana made short work of his hired team?

He turns his gaze on the other people in the room. The mages are all still concentrating. Leliana looks startled, while Morrigan -

Morrigan tenses, relaxes, and then crosses to a bare spot on the floor. She kneels to push and tug at the carpet, finally succeeding in creating a lump.

"Lay her here," Morrigan says.

"Close to the lyrium." Alistair nods. "Right."

He carries across the room, then her sets her down gently. Perhaps surprisingly, given how well they seem to know each other, he doesn't linger and find excuses to continue touching her.

"I guess... now we wait," he says as he stands. "And hope."

* * *

Minutes scratch by. They claw their way into an hour, and then another hour. Alistair leans against a wall, looking at nothing. Leliana produces her lock picks and examines them closely, looking for flaws. Morrigan prowls the room, though 'prowling' is perhaps not the right word for a woman whose grace belongs more to a spider than a mountain cat.

Sens makes a sound. The noise is soft. Barely more than a gasp, really. She sucks in a breath and releases it in a groan. It's the same sound she made waking from the Sloth demon's nightmare, hits the same sweet spot in him now that it did then.

Morrigan, Wynne, and Dog all move toward her at the same time. Wynne drops to one knee to inspect the Warden, while Morrigan stands behind her. Dog simply nuzzles Sens, sniffing her face. Wynne tryes to shoo him away with a fluttered hand. He growls in response, but then licks the side of Sens's head and retreats.

Sens makes a face, but curls in on herself for a moment before she wipes the dog drool from her hair. It takes her a few moments of rest to rise, unsteadily, to her feet. Once she's standing, the leather armor and her usual mask combine to make her seem larger than she is. She stretches and then tries to stifle a yawn. It escapes regardless, huge as the yawn of a bear emerging from hibernation. She looks startled for a moment before she resumes the grim look.

Alistair crosses toward her. When he draws near, he reaches a hand out, as if to steady her. "Welcome back."

"It's done," she says.

The glow that suffuses the room finally dims. Irving and his trio of nameless mages begin to stir.

"Then let's go tell the lucky mother, huh?" There's a smile in Alistair's voice, but he's not fool enough to miss the note of tension that hides beneath it. And there's certainly no way not to see the taut line of Alistair's shoulders.

Sens shakes her head. "Connor comes first."

That draws a chuckle from Wynne. "Checking your work?"

Morrigan makes a derisive noise.

"Alistair, Bann Teagan, he'll need to be handled carefully." Sens speaks as if Wynne hadn't addressed her. "Familiar people would be better. Calm is key."

"Familiar, but not his mother?" Teagan crosses his arms.

"Indeed. Sens has a point." Wynne shakes her head. "Mother and child renuions are often fraught with emotion. Too much too soon could overwhelm him, and may make the process painful for them both."

"So, what, keep him from her?" Alistair shakes his head. "That's cruel. Not an option."

Sens turns to Alistair. She says nothing for a long moment, waits until he looks away from her before she says, "Hardly. You or Bann Teagan should greet him, then offer to take him to his mother."

"The one thing he doesn't need is to wake alone."

There's a pause as the room absorbs Wynne's meaning. Alistair and Teagan look to each other, and then start a mad dash for the stairs. Sens waits a moment, and then says, "Dog. Follow them."

Dog barks once and trots toward Sens before he goes, sits patiently in front of her until she buries her fingers in his fur. She gives him a few dutiful scratches. But Zevran sees her knees tremble. She has to lean into Dog to keep her balance.

The mabari doesn't step away from her until she can carry her own weight again. He whines softly before he leaves, following Alistair and Teagan.

"Someone should tell Sten that it's over." Sens turns to regard the rest of them. Morrigan opens her mouth, but Sens cuts a hand through the air. "No, Morrigan."

Leliana gives a swift nod. "I will return shortly." She sweeps from the room, adding with a smile. "Perhaps Sten will even come with me!"

Morrigan makes a disgusted noise and follows after. Just before Sens can speak, Morrigan waves a hand. "Never fear. I'll avoid Sten for now. But you know my opinion on children."

Sens makes no reply. Morrigan apparently takes the lack of objection for acceptance. She's out of the room within instants, off and away in the opposite direction of Leliana, to judge by sound.

It's only then that the other mages finally rouse themselves from whatever trance they were in. Irving takes the measure of the room and smiles. "I take it you were successful, Sens?"

"It's over."

He chuckles. "And now all that remains is the renuion, I suppose. That is where the others have gone?"

But she doesn't need to answer. Alistair and Teagan return with the boy in tow. His eyes are deeply shadowed and his mouth has drawn into a thin line. He stops in the doorway, trembling for a moment when he sees all of them. He fists one hand in the ruff of fur on Dog's neck.

Sens turns to them. Without moving from her spot, she softens her face and asks, gentler than Zevran has ever heard her, "Connor? I'm Sens, your cousin Alistair's friend. Now that you're awake, would you like to see your mother?"

The boy's eyes widen. His trembling turns to outright shaking.

Teagan clasps a hand on Connor's shoulder. "It's all right, lad. Sens and Alistair have helped us very much."

"M-mother might not want to see me. I've..."

"What happened wasn't your fault." Sens's tone brooks no argument, though her expression never hardens. "You didn't have anyone to warn you."

"What about Jowan?"

Oh, that's not good. That's very, very not good. Especially not good is the way Irving gives Sens a tight, pointed look.

Sens ignores the look. Instead, she asks Connor, bluntly, "Did Jowan warn you about the Beyond?"

"The what?"

"The Fade, child, the Fade. Did this... Jowan... ever mention it to you?" Wynne says Jowan's name delicately, as if the word might bite.

Connor shakes his head.

"Then how could you ever have known?"

Some of the fear leaves Connor's face at Wynne's gentle question.

"Connor," Sens says, equally gently. "Your mother will be happy to see you awake, no matter what. That's how mothers are."

Connor pauses, opens his mouth, but then he goes silent and looks to Alistair. He never says the words, but Zevran can hear them regardless: _Not mine._

Alistair gives him a crooked grin and leans down. "Tell you what. I'll be right behind you. You know she can't get angry at you with me around."

Connor nods at that.

They find Isolde in the chapel with her forehead touched to a bare spot on the altar. Her eyes are closed so tightly that she doesn't notice them.

Zevran stops, waiting for Sens to speak. But she rests a hand on Alistair's upper arm again, and Alistair pats Connor on the shoulder.

"M-Mother?"

Isolde jerks away from the altar. She nearly trips as she stands and whirls to face them. Her eyes light up, her lips curving in glee.

"C-Connor? My boy!" She reaches out, and there's only an instant of hesitation before Connor runs to her.

Mother and child reunions, Zevran thinks distantly as the noblewoman enfolds her son in an embrace. It's strange to watch them and their simple, obvious joy. When was the last time he'd played any part in making someone this happy?

He can remember the last time he knifed a man in the liver. He can remember the last time he had to improvise a garrotte. He remembers all too well the last time he spent the night with someone.

But he doesn't remember making anyone happy like this. Except Rinna.

* * *

They leave the Chapel and adjourn to the Great Hall for a meal, or something like one. There's no one to cook - if indeed cooking could be done given the kitchen's state - and none of the sitting rooms have been cleaned yet. Isolde explains as much in a heavily-accented apology.

Poor nobles, he thinks. Fools, idealists, _and_ all but useless. At least Antivan nobility have an actual trade, even if that trade is organizing cells of assassins.

Sens and Alistair both eat with gusto. It's typical for them, but it's still strange to see a woman shorter than he is eat just as much as the six-foot ex-Templar - and Alistair easily eats enough for three. Connor, too, eats heartily, while Isolde picks at a slice of bread. She eats almost none of it.

Perhaps more important than appetite is placement: Isolde sits adjacent to the group, perhaps where the head of a table might be, were they not eating on the floor. Sens sits between Alistair and Isolde, with Teagan across from her, and Connor on Alistair's far side.

Zevran watches with interest as Teagan and Sens share the duty of drawing Isolde's attention from Alistair. They seem to manage it with ease. When they don't, Zevran almost winces. He and Alistair have their share of issus, but Isolde seems have dug the claws in and can't draw them out again.

Doesn't she have better things to do than needle the reason Connor wasn't killed out of hand?

At last, Sens's face shutters closed. That makes him sit up and take notice. And Sens doesn't disappoint; she cuts a hand through the air and says, "I need to speak with the arl." The _I am done with you now_, though unspoken, comes through quite clearly.

Teagan and Isolde both recoil a bit. Teagan recovers first, though Isolde smoothes her face into serenity in record time.

"The arl is deathly ill. We'd sent out Redcliffe's knights to retrieve Andraste's Sacred Ashes, but none returned with them."

Sens looks to Alistair. She arches an eyebrow for an instant.

Alistair clears his throat, then hems and haws, and finally producses a tiny leather pouch from his pack. "You mean these ashes?"

The reaction from the nobles makes up for the weeks he spent slathering elfroot on his ribcage and trying not to breathe in too deeply. Truly, he's fallen in with amusing companions.

"A-are those...?" But Isolde doesn't finish her question. The answer rings clear through Alistair's earnest expression, the way Leliana turns solem. "You found them! How did you know we needed them?"

"We met Ser Donall in Lothering," Alistair says. "Did he ever return here?"

It's Teagan's turn to look grave. "Just in time for the start of the other troubles. He was killed the second night."

"I see." Alistair looks down, but then his eyes alight on the pouch of ashes. That seems to cheer him. "Well, are we going to see if these can cure him? We might even be lucky enough to start a saving people streak."

* * *

Zevran doesn't accompany either of the Wardens into the Arl's room. Between Teagan, Isolde, Alistair, Sens, Connor, a priest fetched from the Redcliffe Chantry, Wynne, and the other mages, the room is full as it is. That wouldn't have stopped him, but the look Wynne sends his way has him stepping back from the threshold.

Apparently, Wynne wants him to stay away from the Arl as payment for her earlier distraction of the other mages. It's probably just as well. He's a notorious bad influence, after all.

Half an hour after they all went in, they file out. Teagan and Alistair support a white-haired man he assumes is the Arl. Wynne follows closely, her brow furrowed in concentration, with Isolde right after. Sens trails the group with a hand on Connor's shoulder.

The boy looks caught between delight and terror, as if he simultaneously wants to jump up and down in glee _and_ bolt. Zevran pushes away from the wall to follow them. He can't help watching the way his Warden steers the boy without ever tightening her grip.

She truly is used to working with children, then.

Sens lets the boy go when they reach the Great Hall, but it's clear that her attention is on the recitation of events that Teagan launches into. Isolde fills in a few details.

It's Alistair who tells the story of Ostagar in full. Zevran listens closely to the tale. He's heard Loghain's version, and snatches of what Alistair, Morrigan, and Sens lived. He's never heard the truth in full.

That's when he catches himself: he believes his targets over his last employer.

How did it come to this?

He snaps back to attention at Sens's sudden sharp question: "You intend to put Alistair forward as king?"

"I would not propose such a thing if we had an alternative. But the unthinkable has occurred." Despite Eamon's heavy-hearted manner, the man doesn't seem particularly broken up about the idea of Alistair on the throne.

Zevran weighs the idea of the senior Warden on the throne. That Eamon doesn't find the idea deeply terrifying makes him instantly suspicious.

Whether Sens finds it suspicious or not, he truly cannot tell. She aims herself at the Arl, stands with her hands folded behind her back, and never once changes position or posture. Perhaps her stare - if it is a stare - spurs him on to greater explanation. Perhaps he would have explained regardless.

"Teagan and I have a claim through marriage, but we would seem opportunists, no better than Loghain. Alistair's claim is by blood."

Alistair's mail chimes. "And what about me? Does anyone care what I want?"

"You have a responsibility, Alistair. Without you, Loghain wins. I would have to support him, for the sake of Ferelden. Is that what you want?"

"I... but I... no, I don't. My lord."

A nice double-bind, Zevran can't help but think. Play on Alistair's utter hatred of Loghain, present an either/or situation, and let Alistair's apparent inability to think past grief and anger do all the rest. Quite ingenius, really, except for the part where Sens radiates grim disapproval without ever saying a word.

Eamon stares at her. Maybe he senses that if Alistair is an object to be moved, and his hatred of Loghain is the lever, then Sens is the fulcrum. Maybe he simply finds her silence discomfiting.

"As it is," he says, "I see only one way to proceed. I will call for a Landsmeet, a gathering of all of Ferelden's nobility in the city of Denerim. There, Ferelden can decide who shall rule, one way or another."

Sens finally moves: she looks to Alistair, who seems too busy staring at the floor to notice. Her face shutters closed. Impossible as it seems, she stands even straighter when she turns back to Eamon.

"Call this Landsmeet," she says. Her tone permits no argument, but offers no insight to her thoughts. She's walled herself away again. "While Alistair agrees, you have my aid."


End file.
